


The Lottery

by lilcrabcrab



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: A lot of pain, Anxiety, Electrocution, Gang Rape, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Sorry, Idol AU, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Overstimulation, Pain, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Starvation, Torture, Underage Rape/Non-con, Vibrators, Violence, Whipping, basically everyone makes an appearance - Freeform, because of ptsd, disturbingly canon compliant, good dad taeyong, ot18, sm dungeons, soft moments with a sense of doom, this was supposed to be mainly jaeyong but everything is going in nomin directions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 08:57:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 13
Words: 25,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16658086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilcrabcrab/pseuds/lilcrabcrab
Summary: What if the SM Dungeons were real dungeons? The type where people are locked up and hurt and broken?What if these dungeons were used for the idols?And what if NCT, despite, because of, and throughout their love, were taken to these dungeons?What then?





	1. Dread

The SM Dungeons. It was something that the fans joked about, not realising how close they were to the truth. It was for their own good: that’s what the manager said, every single time, before the lottery began. For the good of the group, the company, and even, he would go as far as to add, each member as individuals.

It was a dungeon - in a way that Jaehyun only wished was metaphorical.

Now, for the third time since his debut, he makes his way there, with the other 17 members by his side. They’ve been called, all of NCT 2018, to the dungeon.

The way that it works is simple. When a member steps out of line, makes a mistake, or does something drastically wrong, he must be punished.

It would be boring if it ended at that though - the company was SM Entertainment, after all. Where is the entertainment, the dramatic flair, in that?

So instead, there is a lottery. Every member’s name put in a jar, and one drawn out as the one to take the punishment for he who commited the wrong. They’re a team, and a team should do that for each other, shouldn’t they?

Either way, it’s far more punishment to be the reason for your friend’s suffering than to suffer on your own.

Walking down the stairs into the dungeon, the air around them feels like it’s stained black: heavy and dark and sickening. In the hazy darkness, it seems to Jaehyun as if he can sense his members and their stuttering heartbeats behind him.

The fear isn’t like it was the first time. Before, it was walking into the unknown, like being pushed into a hole and not knowing what was at the bottom, spiralling into chaos in pressing silence. Now, it’s like recognising the beginning of a recurring nightmare; it’s that moment in the horror movie when the protagonist turns around to see the same villain behind them again.

It isn’t the first time that year, and it almost makes Jaehyun hate the members for slipping up twice within only eight months. It breaks him, and it breaks the younger ones more, to be brought back here to wait and hope for a good result when they know there is no good option.

But how could he hate them, when these 17 are all but family, blood brothers, to him by now?

Their bond is clear from the way they are right this second, descending into the dreaded together. Even though the dark grey echoes of their footsteps in the stairwell seem to press down on them, there’s a warmth that can be found in knowing that they are next to him.

Jaehyun distracts himself by watching the other members as they walk. Renjun has his fists clenched, tight enough that one can imagine the nails pressing into his skin. Jungwoo is shaking so much that he trips and almost falls, but after noticing that, Lucas is by his side, a gentle arm around him. Jungwoo goes limp, leaning into Lucas’s side, and when Lucas turns to place a kiss on his forehead, Jaehyun looks away. It’s too intimate, a moment not meant for him.

There’s a whispered conversation somewhere behind him. He hears Taeyong’s voice, soft but shaking, repeating “It won’t be you, it’s okay, Jisung, look at me, you’re going to be fine,” and tiny, decreasing sniffles in reply.

Jaehyun loves Taeyong so much, in that moment. 

He loves Taeyong, for the way that he cares so much about each and every one of them. He loves Taeyong, for the way that he holds him, kisses him, when it’s late at night and Jaehyun’s memories comes back to torture him. He loves Taeyong, his boyfriend, his everything, for the way he gives out his love so recklessly and selflessly and perfectly.

He himself can’t do that - can’t open himself up in a situation like this and give his love to those around him. All Jaehyun knows is to hide, to put the things that hurt him inside himself so that no one else can see them and no one else will have to be hurt by them either.

There are knives hidden within his soul that he keeps there so that they don’t cut anyone else.

“Jaehyun,” a voice calls softly, but he doesn’t answer. He bites his lip, lowering his eyes to the steps ahead of him. He doesn’t feel like talking, not when the fingers of pain experienced mere months ago are stroking at his consciousness, begging to be let in.

Then, a hand is on his shoulder, and he has no choice but to turn around and glance at the man walking beside him. It’s Doyoung, and they nod at each other, not saying much. Being next to each other is enough - there’s no way to break the wall between Jaehyun’s thoughts and his mouth right now. Doyoung, at least, knows this.

Jaehyun feels so far away from them all, as if he’s drowning in his own mind and memories. But at the same time, he feels close - feels like he can sense their heartbeats and the colour of their individual fears.

Neither is good. He just wants this to be over. He just wants to not be chosen. He just wants everyone in NCT, everyone in SMTown, in fact, to be safe.

The doors to the dungeon look the same as any of the other doors in the company building - simple, modern, windowless. Soundproofed. 

As they pass through, the memories of this place grow sharper. The jar, with each name written on light pink paper inside it. The plain, featureless walls. The metal door on the other side of the room.

Not many of them knew what lay on the other side of that door. It was a shame that Jaehyun did.

When a person goes through a traumatic experience, their mind forgets the parts that hurt the most. It’s part of how the human brain protects itself against the memories that do more harm than good. This is why a mother will willingly go through childbirth again, despite the pain. This is why victims of horrific crime fail to tell their stories in court. This is why Jaehyun remembers the mundane parts of the dungeon, and it is these parts that remind him of the suffering, rather than the parts that actually hurt.

Those, he must relive as a new experience each time, only a ghost of a memory reminding him how it happens.

A man, wearing a normal company suit, walks in.

“Take a seat,” he says, and they obey. He looks at them all with an unreadable expression, then clears his throat.

“Let the lottery begin.”


	2. Condemn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this is so late D: I blame school and exams
> 
> Otherwise, please enjoy :)

There isn’t much to say before the actual lottery itself that will make anything better, but that doesn’t stop the manager from going on and on about how this is for their own good, and how they have no choice but to partake in it. It’s the same speech as the last time they were here, and the time before, just with the words all mixed around a bit. They know, by now, that they should take this as a warning for the future; they know that their seniors went through this too; they know that there is nothing they can do to escape.

Half of Jaehyun wants this to go on forever so that what comes next never actually comes: the other half wants it all to be done and over with so that he can continue with his life and try to forget that this will inevitably happen again.

The speech comes to an end. There is a silence for a few seconds. When they were more innocent, they may have protested during this silence, but not anymore. Now, each member sits and waits, knowing that the next words would be the true beginning of the day’s suffering.

“I’m sure you’re all waiting to find out who it was that caused you to be here,” he says. In the corner of his eye, Jaehyun sees the dreamies shift slightly closer to each other.

“Lee Jeno,” the man says. The words fall like knives. “Please step forward.”

He does. His hands are shaking, but his head is held high, eyes fixed on the door on the other side of the room. 

“I will hereby explain your mistake. Please do not move or interrupt me as I do so.”

Jeno makes a small nod, then chokes out the word ‘yes’ when the manager still doesn’t start.

“We were contacted by the school that you, and many of your members, go to. Or, should I say, went to, because a few days ago, we were informed that you have been expelled.” 

Jaehyun hears Doyoung suck in a breath behind him. 

“Would you like to explain what you did, Jeno?” the manager says.

Jeno opens his mouth, but no words come out. It’s clear that he doesn’t know what to say, or how to say it, or whether he should speak at all.

Then, a small voice next to Jaehyun speaks up. It’s Jisung, and he looks too angry for his young age.

“I was there, I can explain it. If you want…” he says.

Surprisingly, the manager nods.

“This guy was picking on me at school… he told me no one liked me and he pushed me down the stairs and then Jeno came and-”

“I threw that guy down the entire stairwell.” Jeno cuts in. “He’s in hospital now.”

“And do you recognise that this is not the right thing to do, Jeno?” says the manager.

Jeno only lowers his eyes to the ground. Jisung looks like he’s ready to fight the manager, but Taeyong holds him back.

After a silence that stretches for too long, the manager clears his throat, and moves towards the lottery jar. “Because of Jeno’s inability to behave himself, which may indeed be partly the fault of the older members that should be looking after him, we are here to give out the punishment deserved.”

Jaehyun feels as if the next 60 seconds go in slow motion.

First, the manager gestures to the space beside him. Jeno looks back at them, fear flashing in his eyes, then moves to stand next to him. 

On one side of the manager is Jeno. On the other side is the jar. 

Jaehyun supposes that they’re supposed to blame one another for what happens next, but he knows that it’ll never be Jeno that they blame, no matter how much of a mistake he has made. It’s not fair,anyways: the way that they are punished never was fair. Everyone knows this, but it doesn’t stop them from taking the punishment - there’s no way to escape it, their seniors have told them already.

Anyway, the imagery is beautiful in a twisted way. An inanimate object, as pretty and polished as anything else in the company’s outward image, made for the sole purpose of torturing the members. A living breathing boy that means the world to each and every member, stood there as a representation of the consequences of mistakes. The maker of their doom in the middle.

The jar itself is reminiscent of the company itself in the worst way. The paper that their names are written on is the pale pink of the logo, and folded cleanly, neatly, each one looking exactly the same as the others. Their group’s logo is printed across the front in shiny black ink: it looks like it’s trying to fit in with all the other things associated with NCT, the things that they are actually proud of. The glass is polished so that it reflects the too harsh lights above them. 

The manager pops the lid off, and sets it down on the table.

Jaehyun looks at Jeno. There’s a single tear rolling down his cheek. The lights shine on it, making it look like a diamond embedded in Jeno’s skin. If such a scene was shot in a music video, the fans would call it beautiful.

Jaehyun himself is paralysed - too scared to think, to move, to cry. He can almost taste the blood that had trickled into his mouth last time he was here, almost smell the acrid scent of the metal tools. Memories can’t be locked up forever. Only now does Jaehyun accept this fact.

The manager’s hand hovers over the jar, like a child considering what to choose before reaching into a candy jar. His face is emotionless. Jaehyun has never hated his company more.

The whole situation goes too fast and too slow. Time is hurtling into the point where dread ends and suffering begins and Jaehyun wishes he had longer to prepare himself. Then he wishes that the manager would hurry up and pick the name out. Selfishly, he reasons that it wouldn’t be him - they wouldn’t choose the same person twice, would they? The odds don’t work like that.

As the manager starts to reach in, Jaehyun instinctively reaches out for his boyfriend’s hand to hold. Taeyong’s hand is clammy with sweat when he finds it, but nevertheless he holds on tight enough that it hurts.

Around him, he sees the other members do the same, trying to find comfort as their fate is revealed. Yuta has his arms wrapped fiercely around Winwin. Johnny is biting his lip so hard it draws blood, but Ten holds back his own tears as he rubs comforting circles into Johnny’s back.

Jeno, the one for whom they are there, looks like he might fall apart, but Renjun mouths “it’s alright” to him from across the seemingly untouchable space between Jeno and the rest of the members. It was his fault, but who could blame him? Perfection is a state not even idols can achieve, no matter how much the public expects them to do it.

And Jaemin. Eyes trained on the jar, too scared to blink - too scared to breathe. A small ache in the small of his back returning like a phantom, as if to remind him why this was only his second time in the dungeon, despite debuting at the start.

There’s no one that remembers the first punishment as well as Jaemin does.

  
  
  



	3. Begin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I'm late again at this point just start expecting everything to be late by one day
> 
> But this chapter is like twice as long as the others so enjoy the increased content <3

_September 2016_

The older members never told the Dreamies anything. It was frustrating, really. They were 16 already, or at least, most of them were. They didn’t need to be treated like children.

But still, it was excusable. The 127 members were basically young first time parents of seven teenage boys. Some mistakes and misjudgements were bound to happen. Jaemin felt a pang of sympathy for Taeyong, who was saddled with so many members to look after and deal with. It couldn’t be easy.

Despite this, Jaemin still didn’t understand. It was obvious that there was something the older members were hiding from them: something that was whispered about when they were out of earshot, something that they couldn’t help but discuss yet feared the ‘children’ finding out. When Taeyong took Mark aside after practice one day, and told the rest of them to go home, Jaemin decided to take matters into his own hands.

One night in the Dream dorms, Jaemin grabbed each of the Dreamies (except Mark, since he was apparently old enough to know already) and told them to meet up in the living room so he could tell them something. He was curious about what the older ones didn’t want them to know, and he was sure the others were too. They were going to make a plan to find out, he concluded. The old ones weren’t allowed to have all the fun to themselves.

“So, why are we all gathered here tonight?” asked Donghyuck, examining his nails in mock boredom as if he had something better to do.

“Well first of all, this is our dorm, you literally had to walk 10 metres to get here,” Jisung replied. “But yea, I’d also like to know. What’s happening?”

Jaemin giggled a little. The prospect of the mischief they would cause was amusing in and of itself, and it took a while for him to calm down enough to address the group.

He looked at them, suddenly very serious.

“There’s something the older members aren’t telling us,” he began. “They’ve been sneaking around having secret conversations: they even involved Mark, didn’t you guys see that? And they’ve been having these conversations without us. I tried to ask them what it was, but even Ten wouldn’t tell me.”

Jaemin looked to his best friend for a reaction. Jeno’s eyes were wide, and he was staring at Jaemin intently. This encouraged Jaemin, and he looked at the Dreamies with a determined expression as he said his next words.

“I would like to know what it’s all about.”

At this, Donghyuck leaned forward conspiratorially. “I’m in. What’s the plan?”

Jaemin hadn’t actually thought this far - to be honest, he had expected Renjun to shut down the idea immediately. However, he hadn’t heard Renjun speak a single word the entire time. Shrugging this off as good luck, Jaemin started to think of a reply. Suddenly, his thoughts were interrupted by Chenle.

“Let’s lock them up in our rooms and not let them out until they tell us!” he said, eyes bright with excitement.

“Yes, good idea,” said Jisung.

“How about we lure them here by telling them that one of us set something on fire?” Suggested Jeno.

Donghyuck waved his hand dismissively. “No, no, no, guys, the best way is clearly BLACKMAIL.”

“Wait, let me get a piece of paper to write down our ideas,” Jaemin said, getting up.

As he walked over to the kitchen bench where they kept (for unknown reasons) notepads, he pondered the feasibility of the plans suggested. Lost in thought, he almost missed the glaringly obvious gap on the couch where Renjun would normally sit, which wasn’t visible from his position before.

Almost, but not quite.

It was then that Jaemin realised that in his excitement, he hadn’t noticed that Renjun had left ages ago.

A solid force slammed into their front door as Jaemin’s mind processed this very thought. This was followed by muffled Chinese disappointment, before Chenle ran over and opened the door to Renjun.

“你怎么了？ 是不是跑回家的？ 没带钥匙吗？干嘛怎么激动？” Chenle spouted nonsensically, until Renjun gained his breath fully and yelled (in Korean, thankfully): “I have something of importance to announce.”

“I went to the 127 dorms to look for Sicheng,” he continued. “I wanted to avoid talking to you guys, since y’all are annoying and I spend too much time with you anyways. I’d rather hang out with him.”

Donghyuck gasped in mock offense, and Renjun looked at him with a withering look in his eyes.

“Anyways, when I asked them, they all looked around nervously like they didn’t want to tell me or something. In the end Doyoung told me that he and Yuta had disappeared last night, so I ran back here to tell you guys.”

“Hence the crashing into the door out of breath?” Chenle said.

“Yea, sorry about that. So what I mean to say is that… it really does seem like something dodgy is going on.” Renjun said.

“Didn’t Yuta and Sicheng go on a date or something last night? They were sending those disgusting pictures on the group chat and all, maybe they went off to fuck or something?” Donghyuck suggested.

Jeno shook his head. “For a whole night and the day after? It doesn’t sound right…”

He was right, as he often was in Jaemin’s eyes. Something was happening, but there was no way for them to find out until they worked out how to get the secrets out of those older guys.

Jaemin was sure it was all connected.

“We were working on a plan before you came, Renjun,” Jaemin said, waving the piece of paper he had procured from the kitchen. “If you had stayed, you would have known. Let’s continue brainstorming. Maybe we’ll figure something out.”

The six boys bent over the paper, swapping ideas and theories. As the time neared midnight, Mark ventured out of his room for the first time that night. He had probably been writing lyrics or studying or something responsible that Jaemin didn’t want to think about.

“What are you guys doing? Shouldn’t you sleep soon? We have practice tomorrow.” Mark rubbed his face exasperatedly.

“Oh, nothing,” Donghyuck said, smiling innocently. He bowed sarcastically. “We’ll go to bed now.”

On the one hand, Jaemin wanted to continue with their plans, but on the other hand, Jisung had fallen asleep in Chenle’s arms at some point and no one had noticed - not even Chenle, somehow. As the ringleader of this operation, Jaemin decided that they had done enough for a night.

“Yea, guys, let’s go to sleep now. See you all in the morning!” He said cheerfully. They each departed to their rooms. Despite the excitement from earlier, the Dream dorms became quiet and normal within half an hour.

Just before Jaemin fell asleep, he heard Jeno whisper his name from across the room.

“What?” Jaemin whispered back.

“Don’t you get the feeling that something serious is really going to happen… with Yuta and Sicheng hyung disappearing and all… and the things the older members are talking about…”

“Don’t worry, I don’t think it’ll be anything serious. They’ll be fine.” Jaemin said. “It’s okay.”

Jeno mumbled something soft and sweet in general agreement. Jaemin heard a shuffling of blankets, and then Jeno’s rhythmic breathing as he started to drift asleep.

The night was the same as always - calm and quiet. There was a tiny, niggling, feeling in the back of Jaemin’s mind that Jeno’s concerns were right, but he pushed the idea away, stashing it into the part of his consciousness that never saw the light and covering it with all the good things in the world.

Jaemin had the Dream members. He had Lee Jeno, his best friend, whom he loved. There was no need for him to worry about anything.

A melody and some lyrics crossed his mind as he started to fall asleep, and he made a mental note to tell Mark about them for a possible future song. Something about being young, about not worrying. It sounded nice. Jaemin was happy.

Nothing bad would happen to them.

\---

The first thing that Jaemin noticed when he woke was the manager standing at his door, telling him to hurry up and get up.

The second thing he noticed was that Jeno was already gone.

The third thing he noticed was that there were loud cries coming from the outside, accompanied by harsh yelling and the clinking of metal.

Then there was no more time for him to notice anything, because the manager had lost his patience and was approaching him, rough hands manhandling him to get up and force him out the door. Some clothes were haphazardly thrown at him, and Jaemin put them on.

“What’s going on-” Jaemin asked, but was answered only by a sharp jab in his side forcing him to be quiet. He let the manager lead him out into the living room, looking around in confusion at the scene before him.

All the other NCT Dream members were standing in a line, with their hands behind their backs. A few items around the place were knocked over, and a manager was holding Donghyuck in place to stop him from fighting back. Other managers stood around, in doorways or in arm’s reach of each member.

Without a word, the manager closest to the front door turned around and started to leave. Another pushed Jeno forward roughly, and they realised they were supposed to follow. Jaemin looked around at everyone unsurely, but in the end, they knew that they had to obey the company.

They followed the managers, down the stairs of their apartment and into two vans parked across the street. The windows were tinted, and once inside, Jaemin tried to open the door but found it locked.

“Where are we going?” Renjun demanded, not really expecting an answer.

“To the company buildings. Specifically, a place you guys are yet to visit.” one manager said.

“What-”

“It’s called the dungeons. Now shut up. You’ll find out what it is soon.”

\---

When taken to a dungeon, one would imagine stone walls and moss, primitive torches flickering to illuminate rusted iron gates, but the SM dungeons were the polar opposite. Harsh bright artificial lighting cast unflattering shadows on their faces, and the blank walls forced them to focus on the only thing in that room other than the seven Dream members: a large jar, with pink paper inside.

There were 14 seats, but the others were empty for now. Jaemin stared at the wall in front of him and wondered what was happening, wondered what had gone so wrong that they had ended up here, wherever this was.

The other members arrived, after a wait that stretched indefinitely. There was no measure of time in that room - no clock or progression or sound to tell you whether it was a minute that you spent in there, or an hour.

It was five older members that walked in, not seven. There was Doyoung, with his fingers fidgeting in front of him, and Ten, eyes wide and mouth agape as he took in his surroundings. Jaehyun had his chin held high, but there was a waver in his eyes, that looked around the room in panicked darting glances. Taeil, their eldest, looked suddenly so small, his head bowed and his steps hesitant.

Taeyong looked nothing like the leader he was. He walked with his eyes on the ground ahead of him, refusing to meet anyone’s gaze. As he sat down, Jaemin saw his arms tremble. Slowly, Taeyong put his head in his hands and took deep, shuddering breaths. He was one strand from breaking apart, and Jaemin knew that if Taeyong broke, NCT itself broke.

The confusion and panic that had been rising imperceptibly in Jaemin’s mind ever since the day had started reached a fever pitch. He wanted to run, to cry - he wanted to yell at every silent face around him until they gave him an answer.

A door opened behind him.

A man, wearing a normal company suit, walked in.

“Let the lottery begin,” he said. If this was a movie, there would have been a bass drum’s boom in the soundtrack at this point, but this was real life, so there was only silence.

The man cleared his throat, and very formally, addressed the group.

“We are here today to introduce you to an aspect of the SM Entertainment culture that you have not experienced as of yet. It is something we do to encourage good behaviour and responsibility in you, and to advance your careers in the most effective way, like all else that we do. Since this is your first time, I will explain the entire process carefully.

A few days ago, two of your members committed a mistake. Such a mistake must be punished, and we have a certain way that we do it. The jar over there has each of your names in it. We will draw a name out of it, and the name drawn will be the member who will receive the punishment in the place of the members that made the mistake.

Please remember that this is for your own good, and take this as a warning to stop both yourselves and the rest of your members from making mistakes in the future. We will move on to discussing the mistake made now.”

The door to the side of the room was pushed open. Two figures came in: one small and scared and lost, the other shooting daggers out of his eyes as if to challenge anyone that dared to touch either of them.

“Welcome, Yuta Nakamoto and Dong Sicheng,” the manager said.

“Please tell us what you have done wrong.”


	4. Forget

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the latest I've ever been lmao oops
> 
> Enjoy this chapter it will probably be the only one that won't make you cry

September 2016

If anyone asked, Yuta could recall every detail of every date he had ever been on with Sicheng. He could remember the first date and the way that Sicheng had seemed to bounce with excitement. He could remember the time they had gone to that cafe with the fairy lights along the wall and Sicheng had looked at him with sparkling eyes and an expression that said “you’re my everything”. He could remember the exact moment in that cheesy romance movie when Yuta had decided that they could do better than the couple about to kiss on the screen. 

These were the best moments of Yuta’s life. There was no way he would let himself forget them.

There was nothing that he regretted - except that they ended abruptly on the 6th of July that year. Since their debut, they had been caged, forced to keep their relationship hidden and to stay out of the way of the group’s success. Nevermind that they wanted to be happy. The company didn’t care that nothing was more important to Yuta than Sicheng. It was the contract: They would hide, or they would be punished.

Yuta missed the trainee days, sometimes. Back then, they could do anything, be anything. They could love each other, and do so out in the sea of oblivious faces that was the public. They had just been trainees, two young men hoping to become something amazing and in the meantime, finding something amazing in each other.

They were sitting around at the dorms that afternoon, not doing much, curled around each other with Sicheng in Yuta’s lap as they each amused themselves with a book or a video on their phones. 

Yuta wanted to go back to those days before debut. Fuck the company, and the rules, and being a good pretty perfect idol for the public to adore. He wanted to be free, wanted to take Sicheng out and forget about the consequences.

What could go wrong, anyways?

He had a plan. He would ask Sicheng out on a date like the old days. Yuta was tired of hiding. He was going to have one of those perfect nights out with Sicheng and nobody could stop him.

“Sicheng, baby, let’s go out tonight,” he said, leaning into Sicheng’s field of vision to get his attention.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Like, a date. I want to take you out on a date.”

Sicheng frowned. It was clear that he was thinking about the warnings that the company, and some of their friends in Exo, had given them.

“We’ll be fine, it’s safe. I just really miss going out on proper dates.” Yuta smiled his healing, reassuring smile, the one that Sicheng couldn’t say no to no matter how much he pretended he could. “I want to take you somewhere really special.”

Sicheng bit his lip, trying not to look at Yuta’s annoyingly persuasive face. Being cute to get what he wanted was supposed to be his job anyways, not his boyfriend’s.

“Please, baby?”

“If we get caught we’ll be in trouble-” Sicheng said, with enough hesitation that Yuta knew he wasn’t going to say no at this point.

Yuta pouted a little. “Baby…”

Sicheng rolled his eyes. “Fine, when do you want to go?”

The smile that came in return was brighter than anything else in Sicheng’s world.

“How about now?” Yuta said. “Get changed into something nice and we can leave!”

Sicheng was whipped, so whipped. He nodded and headed to his room with a giddy grin on his face. After so many months without going on dates, it felt like the first one again: anticipation and dazed infatuation that made him feel like he could fly, like he could dance for days on end. 

They walked to a nice restaurant tucked in a side street of the city. It was the sort of place that wasn’t fancy to the point of discomfort, but was definitely someplace special nevertheless. Paranoia over being caught made them cautious - they took furtive glances behind them whenever someone seemed to walk too close, and asked for a private room to hide them from the public’s eyes.

Then, as always, they got lost in each other’s eyes, and the rest of world fell away.

They spent half the time there talking and laughing and settling into that feeling of ‘this is right’ that they only found in each other, and the other half staring at each other in silent appreciation of the fact that they were here, the two of them, with nothing to do but remember how much they were in love. It was the rhythm of things, the way that their worlds spun. Yuta and Sicheng, Sicheng and Yuta. No one but the other. No love stronger.

After an hour or so out, the fear from earlier was mostly gone. When Sicheng was smiling widely in the way he only did when only Yuta was there to see it, there was no way Yuta could worry about anything else in the world. Yuta was leaning over to whisper sweet giggly nothings in Sicheng’s ear, so it wasn’t surprising that the idea of the mysterious punishment and the trouble they could get in seemed far away.

“I want to show you something,” Sicheng said. The meal was finished and they were just sitting there contentedly, reluctant to return to their normal lives.

Yuta agreed. Anything for his love. Anything to keep this evening going.

Sicheng led him by the hand to a small park, in a part of Seoul they never usually bothered to visit. It was dark by then, and the path they walked down was lit by street lamps fashioned like lanterns. Sicheng looked like perfection in the most beautiful man’s body. Yuta wanted to kiss him, but a part of him was still nervous about someone finding them. Instead, he whispered “you’re beautiful,” and felt his heart skip a beat when Sicheng blushed at the compliment.

They arrived at a secluded bench, with trees arching overhead and a little stream singing a melody of water in front. There were soft lights above, the sort that cast warm tones everywhere and created a glow around Sicheng. Sicheng held Yuta’s hand as they went and sat down, sides pressed together and fingers entwined in Yuta’s lap.

“This place… I used to come here as a trainee when things got too much… when I was the only one who couldn’t speak Korean properly and I just wanted the space to think for myself and forget about becoming an idol for a while. Getting through it all was… really hard, back then.” Sicheng said, looking at the moonlit view in front of them. A leaf fluttered down next to him, and he absent mindedly crumpled it in his fist, releasing the pieces onto the ground slowly. His voice was soft and raw with emotion. “Ever since we started dating, you became my escape, and I stopped coming here.”

Yuta nodded. “And things are hard again, now?”

“Yeah. Tonight has been amazing, but it’s reminded me of what we’ve given up. I missed doing this so much, really… sometimes I wish we never became idols.” Sicheng snuggled a little closer into Yuta’s side, and Yuta put his arm around him. “I want to forget our idol lives, just for tonight.”

Yuta didn’t know how it happened, but after Sicheng said that, they really did forget. The night around them was quiet, and each other’s presence was home. Yuta found himself spilling all the thoughts that kept him up at night, all the misgivings that threatened to make him give up on everything; all the hopes he had and the irreversible fact that Sicheng kept him going through it all. At some point, his phone went off, but he ignored it: nothing could be more important than the stars in Sicheng’s eyes and the stories they were sharing.

As they spoke, the fears of getting in trouble with the company finally dissipated completely. They felt like they were in their own world, away from the media and public and the managers. The possibility of someone catching them seemed so distant. In a break in their conversation, Yuta looked at Sicheng, and saw that he was already gazing at him too.

“Kiss me,” Sicheng said, in a rare burst of bravery, and Yuta forgot everything in the world except for the fact that he loved Sicheng, loved him more than he thought a human heart could handle.

He kissed him. Recklessly and passionately, like an animal starved for weeks, like a drowning man’s gasps for air. He kissed him until he could hardly remember how to breathe, until there were stars dancing behind his eyelids, an entire universe found in this moment. He held Sicheng’s face in his hands fiercely, delicately, reverently, and pressed their lips together as if he would never let go.

He kissed him until he was deaf and blind to the world around him, Sicheng the only thing he knew.

Otherwise, he would have noticed the footsteps approaching them, the people walking over to the haven they had found. He would have noticed the vaguely familiar faces, the average type that their company favoured for staff. He would have noticed these people, and maybe then, he would have had a chance to escape.

But it was too late now.

“Don’t try to run,” one said.

“I think you know what you have done wrong.”


	5. Mirror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) I've given up apologising for being late :) This is my smile of no mercy :) enjoy the chapter lovelies :)

_ Present _

In this moment, Jaemin experiences the present with the past overlaid on it, like a path created when you’ve walked it enough times; like a song that you’ve heard enough times to recognise but not enough to sing along to. He sees managers standing menacingly around in the shadows, but by now, they are normal to him.

The dungeons are exactly the same as he remembers, down to the subtle, metallic scent of blood and jagged metal instruments, underlying the general nothingness that seemed to be enforced. It’s a little like hospitals, and Jaemin is reminded of weeks spent alone, watching the walls, thinking about mistakes and love and his friends and nothing at all.

An ache is blooming at the base of his spine, spreading like ink in water. He straightens his spine a little, trying to shift into a position that might relieve some of the pain, but he can’t move too much if he wants to keep his eyes on the lottery and the managers’ eyes off him.

The lights are bright - too bright. Jaemin is trying to focus on the cards inside the jar, but he can’t. The long lines of light from the ceiling reflect onto the glass, curving into strange and graceful shapes, and hiding the contents from view. He imagines that if he could see inside, he might be able to recognise the card that was his, somehow. Something that hurt him so much must look slightly significant, right? 

It’s hard to think that something so nondescript would have dictated what was done to him.

The manager’s hand is reaching into the jar. Jaemin notices that his hand is smoothly manicured, and the nails are oddly long. A picture of normalness, yet the lack of defect in his hand - his whole being, in fact - makes it almost scary. Or maybe it’s just the memories. His mind suggests the image of the same hand hovering over a selection of tools, and Jaemin starts to remember.

 

_ September 2016 _

At the age of 16, Jeno had thought himself old enough. He had thought himself mature, and fearless, and able to do anything. He wasn’t a child anymore, no matter what the image the company set for them portrayed them as. 

Then he was taken, led down to a place he’d never thought could exist, a place that looked like the setting for a nightmare. It was the sort of place that spoke of the uncanny, Jeno decided, the sort that could have been, should have been something normal, but was bent to the shape of something dangerous beneath. 

Suddenly, Jeno was a child, small and unsure and looking for an adult to save him. Taeyong and Doyoung and all the other adults were close around them, but they looked like they were breaking. Jeno felt like a baby watching his father cry for the first time, and the fear rose up in waves.

Helpless, he thought. He felt. He was. Helpless, confused, scared.

The manager had told them that this was punishment - punishment for Yuta and Sicheng hyung being in love and daring to take something so shameful into the public. Jeno didn’t think it was right that they be punished, but it didn’t matter, did it? Obey: it was what he’d been taught as a child, and what he was taught when he joined the company at the age of 13. Obey, and you will be rewarded. Question, and you will be rejected.

Simple.

There was a jar on a small table next to the manager - he removed the lid and set it down. 

“The cards inside here have each of your names written on them,” he said. “The person to take the punishment will be chosen randomly by me, as I pick a card out.”

The panic drops out: he is left with nothingness. This is it, Jeno realised, this is the moment that decides everything.

He didn’t know what punishment entailed, but the slightly metallic scent of the room tickled at his instincts.

There were two things that smell like this: unpolished metal tools, and blood.

Jeno thought himself old, at the age of 16. He knew certain things, at least. And from what he knew, what he imagined, it was pretty likely that the scent in this room was from both.

 

_ Present _

Taeyong knows. He knows, and he wishes that he doesn’t, because since the first lottery, he had learnt that nightmares are real: they twist and tease and torture until even the waking days are invaded by them.

He drifts off into these backward daydreams, sometimes. Even on camera, when someone else is talking, and he’s listening but not really, the dungeon will come back suddenly, knock on the door of his mind and let itself in.

He looks insane, in these moments. The fans call it malfunctioning: they’re right, in a way. Too right. Too innocent.

Now he’s back in the dungeon:  back for the third time, to hate himself for not preventing this from happening again. It’s the last few seconds, the moment just before the truth, the manager inches away, grasping onto a card.

‘Please not one of the kids,’ Taeyong’s thoughts screamed, unvoiced. ‘anyone but the dreamies.”

A card is chosen. It looks the same as all the others. Strangely, Taeyong’s mind goes to the concept of Schrodinger’s cat - the insane thought that before it is revealed, it could be anything.

Taeyong wants it to be himself, he realises. He deserves it, for failing to raise the kids properly, for failing to keep them all safe, for failing as a leader. He should have made sure the kids were happy at school, should have practiced more, should have kept an eye on all 17 of them. Now, for the third time, it’s too late, and he can’t do anything to save them.

There’s nothing more painful than the time during which the manager unfolds the card. The fold is sharp and precise, almost knife like. He peers at the writing on the card, then nods a little to himself. Taeyong swears he can see a bit of a smile, a sneer, smug acknowledgement that for this second, there is no one with more absolute power than him.

The manager looks up. All of Taeyong’s insides sink to the floor - within him is only a pool of black. This is dread, he thought. He knows this feeling too well. Jaehyun seems to sense this, and his hand tightens around Taeyong’s.

Around him, 18 breaths are held.18 pairs of eyes stare, wide open, at the card the manager holds.

“Na Jaemin,” the manager says. “You will be the one to receive the punishment today.”

 

_ September 2016 _

Doyoung didn’t know. He didn’t know, and he wished he did, because the kids he loved so much were looking at him for answers he couldn’t give and the world around him had been tipped upside down. Their seniors had warned them, sure, but that wasn’t enough. Nothing could have been enough to prepare him for this: the emotionless managers and the blank white walls and the lottery jar.

He didn’t know what punishment really was, either - there was some notion that it was really bad, but the seniors never told them what it really was. He would have asked, but whenever the topic was mentioned he would be met with averted eyes and people that retreat into themselves rather than answering.

The fact that the place was called the dungeons was the only clue he got, and not a very hopeful one, at that.

The manager was reaching into the jar, swirling his hand around in the cards before grasping onto one of them. Doyoung wondered who it would be - hoped that it would be someone older, that could deal with the punishment, whatever it was. Some of the dreamies were only 14. It was cruel, really, that for the mistake of two of the older members, these children would be put in the lottery as well.

There was nothing more painful than the time during which the manager unfolded the card. It seemed to go impossibly slow, and as he watched, Doyoung imagined every possible scenario, every possible punishment. Would they be locked up? Deprived of food?

Hurt? Beaten? Tortured?

It was too late to escape it, anyways. The card was chosen - whoever it was, the outcome wouldn’t change. Doyoung found himself hoping it would be himself - if it wasn’t him, it would be his friends, and he didn’t think he could bear the idea of leaving this place behind and knowing that one of the members would stay here, for something horrific to happen to him, while he had no idea what it would be.

The manager looked up. His expression was unreadable.

“Na Jaemin,” the manager said. “You will be the first of NCT to receive the punishment.”

 

_ Present _

Jaehyun is frozen, for a few seconds. There is no way the name he had heard was right - no way that it’s Jaemin again. He had heard wrong, or the manager had read it wrong, or this whole thing was a dream…

But no. He knows. Every member is in exactly once for every lottery, no matter who was chosen the last time. A card for every single member, every time they go to the dungeon. It was fair that way. Maybe the company thought it was merciful.

He sees Jaemin in the corner of his eye. The boy - almost man, now - stares blankly ahead, until the manager next to him gives a push. Then, with shaking legs, he stands up. Takes one trembling step forward, then another.

Jeno, in front of them, starts forward - maybe to help Jaemin, maybe to protest. The manager’s hand shoots out to stop him, and he falls to his knees on the ground instead, defeated and shocked.

After that, the stunned stillness of the room is broken. Behind Jaehyun, there are the beginnings of yelling and cries of outrage and hurt. Taeyong’s hand in his tightens quickly, then slips out. Before Jaehyun realises what’s happening, Taeyong is standing up.

One might call it soulmates, but to Jaehyun it’s just the way that he and Taeyong normally are. All he knows is that he can sense danger, and recklessness, and stupid, crazy, love from Taeyong.

Jaemin falters as he walks, and Taeyong’s eyes snap towards him. 

“Save him,” Jaehyun’s mind tells him, and he can see Taeyong is thinking the same.

  
  



	6. Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I updated the tags Please Check Them if you are worried about triggers because this is an Incredibly Triggering And Explicit Chapter. If you are uncomfortable with this, I will provide a short summary at the start of the next chapter so that you know what happened. Please, I reiterate, please do not read if you are uncomfortable.
> 
> Other than that, MERRY CHRISTMAS, HERE HAVE SOME PAIN
> 
> Edit: I forgot to add the timestamp before so if you were confused, this chapter is set in september 2016 (I've added it in now)

_September 2016_

 

After the rest of the members had been shown out, Jaemin was led through the door on the other side of the lottery room. The hallway on the other side had blank rooms off to each side, and eventually led to a larger, open room.

In this room, Jaemin saw tools of all shapes and sizes hanging on the wall, lying on metal plates, and covering the area around a table with leather straps hanging from the sides.

“Stay here,” a manager said.

Jaemin thought to run, but where to? The door was locked behind him, and there were only dead ends and empty, menacing faces around him.

He stood just inside the room, watching the managers. He was too afraid to move, but ready to run at the hint of any danger. His heart beat a rhythm of panic against his ribcage, and his mind ran wild, imagining what all of these tools and machines could be for.

Without any more words, all the managers turned and left, leaving him alone in the room. Jaemin was gripped with the need to run, to go somewhere, anywhere but there. There were no other exits, only the door that had locked behind the managers when they left. Feverishly, he pounded on the door, yelling, until his knuckles were bruised and almost bleeding.

Then, he gave up. He slumped down on the ground, and watched bruises on his hands darken.

Time passed like a rock falling down a deep well - silent and dark, with the end inevitable but unknown.

Nothing moved. The wait stretched on and on, to the point where Jaemin wished for someone to come, whatever they might do.

Suddenly, the door opened. A man strode in, eyeing Jaemin with sharp, piercing eyes.

“You’re a pretty boy, aren’t you?” he said, picking up a few whips and twirling them around in his fingers as if they were mere toys. “Surely a visual.”

Jaemin nodded.

“Sorry, did you say something?” The man’s voice was mocking. Jaemin almost wished he had shouted. “Answer me properly.”

Jaemin’s throat was dry, his tongue paralysed. “Y-yes..,” he said, then wetted his lips nervously.

“I’d better be careful not to mark you too much then, right? Mustn’t leave too many ugly marks on a beautiful boy like you.” The man smiled lazily, then seemed to decide something.

“Stand over there and take off your shirt,” he said.

Jaemin shook his head, breath catching in his throat. He scrambled backwards, until he felt his back hit the wall behind him.

Trapped. Alone.

“Did I give you a choice?” The man said, lifting the whip in his hand. Jaemin’s eyes following the whip, and he gulped, shaking his head hastily.

“Then obey.”

Jaemin took off his shirt. As he stripped, he glanced at the closed door that was the only escape from this room. There was no way he could escape: somewhere in the logical part of his mind, he knew this. But still, it couldn’t stop him from trying, or from looking and hoping for anything close to a way out.

Adrenaline knows no logic: fear knows no truth.

The torturer picked him up roughly and placed him on the table, so that he could stare only at the ground. His arms were pulled back, and tied into place by leather straps that cut into his skin. He could hardly lift his head enough to see what the man was doing, so everything came to him in sounds: the clatter of something metallic being put down, and the soft swish of something like a whip being waved around. The ringing rhythm of footsteps coming closer. Jaemin felt panic wash over him, and tried to struggle in his bindings.

The first lash struck. Jaemin gasped sharply. It left a white hot trail of pain across his back, and Jaemin couldn’t stop himself from twisting around reflexively. In the glimpse that he caught, he saw that the man was holding a whip with several tails, and jagged claws on each end. He looked like he was smirking.

Then, the next lash came. He bit down on his lip, trying not to make a sound. He would endure this - maybe he himself didn’t deserve this, but he would do it for his hyungs. Subconsciously, he tightened his hands into fists, letting his nails cut into him palms.

He started counting. He didn’t know how many he was going to receive, but putting numbers to each blow gave him something to focus on, rather than the endless pain and the fire dancing down his back.

3, 4, 5, the ticking of the cruelest clock. He wondered what the other members imagined was happening to him now. Whether they could have guessed this. His breaths came ragged and harsh, and spots appeared in his vision. The pain was intense, punishing, unbearable; building to an impossible new high as each lash struck, even when it seemed it couldn’t get worse.

6 all the way to 10, each one now laying onto the ones before - cuts upon cuts, wounds upon wounds. He could feel the whip biting into his skin, deep enough to cut past his skin and tear chunks of muscle. He saw a droplet of blood fly up in front of him from the whip, and closed his eyes.

After that, the pain took over - his mind couldn’t keep counting when the only thing he could think was that it hurt, like claws ripping into his back, like an eternity caving in around him and the world going black and blinding white at the same time. Everything and nothing.

Jaemin bit his lip harder. Tasted blood, but hardly noticed.

When it ended his back was in true agony, a fire that didn’t go out even when the lashes stopped coming. The only difference was the silence, and the way that he almost missed the rhythmic swishing sound of the whip. He realised his throat was hoarse - he might have screamed in the end, he supposed, but he didn’t remember it.

Distantly, he noticed the man untying the leather straps that had held him down. He slapped Jaemin firmly on the ass, as if he were a horse that had just done a ‘good job’.

“Get down now,” he said.

Every part of Jaemin’s body was still captured by a stinging, torturous pain, but the prospect of freedom gave him just enough strength to swing his legs down and stand shakily next to the table.

“C-can I go now?” he asked. He wanted to collapse on the floor, both in relief that it was over and in weakness from the pain. Instead, he clutched the edge of the table, so tight that his knuckles were white.

The man, the torturer, smiled a little, but didn’t say a word. Instead, he turned and led him down the corridor that they had come from. Jaemin couldn’t remember which door was the one that had come through, but he was sure they were nearing it.

After a while, they stopped. The man took some keys out of his pocket, and unlocked the door beside them. Too late, Jaemin saw that it was not the room where the lottery had taken place, nor was it the stairwell that they had used to come here.

The torturer pushed him in, the impact reigniting the pain on his back that had faded to a throbbing ache while they had walked. With a smirk, he turned to walk away. The door shut behind him, and Jaemin heard the click of a lock.

Blank white. That was the first thing Jaemin saw in the room, and the last. Nothing but white walls, white floors, a small drainage hole in the corner painted white. He knelt down in the middle, and slumped forward, utterly defeated.

Then, the cold hit. Not the numbing, slow, cold, that would likely ease some of the whipping wounds, nor the violent, fast cold of a windy day. This was something strange in between, something that lingered but provided no relief, that hurt but did not move. It seeped into his bones and made everything ache. Jaemin realised that he was still shirtless, and there was nothing he could do about it.

He waited. What else could he do? He waited, for someone to take him away, or save him, or just open the door and tell him what was happening. He waited, with the pain from his back making him lightheaded, the cold making him shiver, the blank nothingness of the room making him insane.

He didn’t know how long it had been, only that a long time ago he had started to get hungry. And then, tired, but the everpresent pain stopped him from sleeping. In the emptiness, he thought of each of his members in turn, imagining what each of them were doing or thinking. Maybe they were practicing, or having a nice meal together, or playing games.

He started to imagine what it would be like if they were here with him, but it hurt more to think of them suffering too.

The waiting was the worst part, he decided, worse even than the whip. It felt like hours, like days. Like weeks - the only thing telling him that it wasn’t weeks was that he was still, regretfully, alive.

Eventually, he fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, still sitting cross legged on the ground. He dreamt of whips and cold metal tables, of long corridors that lead to nothing, of cruel smiling faces and a pink card with his name written on it.

It was a welcome break from the nothing.

The door finally opened, and when it did, Jaemin was too weak to even stand up. The men that walked in were ugly and stupid looking, as if they had been crafted from a massive block of meat by a less than skilled craftsman. Jaemin looked at them pleadingly, although he didn’t know what for, anymore.

The men only stared at him. One licked his lips. Their eyes roamed over him, looking like they wanted to devour him. Sharply, Jaemin was reminded of his bared chest.

Jaemin didn’t know what to do, and he found himself too fatigued to move, anyways. A dampened alarm started in the back of his mind, but even when he tried to get up and run, he couldn’t.

The men drew closer.

“So you’re the new pretty boy, huh?” one said. The other stood beside him and sneered. “You certainly look delicious.”

Jaemin’s throat was too hoarse from screaming earlier, and too dry from not having a drop of water since… since the night that Yuta and Sicheng had disappeared. It felt like so long ago. He croaked out the word “no,” but his voice was too far gone to say more.

They laughed. “Need water, huh?” the other said, folding his arms across his chest and looking down at Jaemin with a smirk. “We can give you some, if you’re a good boy for us.”

“I…” Jaemin started, then gave up. “Please,” he said.

“Begging already, are you?” The taller of the two men leaned down close, so that Jaemin could smell his rotten breath. He trailed his hand down Jaemin’s side, then grabbed a handful of his ass. Without warning, he shoved Jaemin’s chest, making him fall backwards. The wounds on his back came alive with pain once more, but the man’s large rough palm was planted on his chest, so that he couldn’t get up.

Jaemin wanted to scream, but he had no voice. His hands scrambled for purchase on the ground, but he was too weak to move.

The man unzipped his pants, bringing out his hardening cock and stroking it a little. He looked at Jaemin the way a predator looks at its prey, and Jaemin recoiled in fear and disgust. Desperately, he struggled against the man, hysterical whimpers falling off his lips unheard.

“You’re so, so, pretty,” he said.

Violent, grabby hands were ripping Jaemin’s pants off, and flipping him over roughly so that he was on his hands and knees. He clenched his ass as tightly as he could - it was the last and only way he could fight back, at that point.

Without warning, the man pushed a finger into him. Jaemin clenched tighter, but then there was something slimy and cold on his ass - lube, he realised - and there were two fingers in him. Jaemin jerked away violently, earning a slap.

“Don’t move, you fucking whore,” the man said, digging his nails into Jaemin’s skin.

It didn’t matter how hard he tried - in the end, every part of Jaemin was too weak, and he couldn’t keep his asshole closed any longer. Helplessly, he felt his ass relax, too fatigued to stay clenched.

The man laughed when he felt it, a cruel, disgusting chuckle. “That’s right, my little slut, that’s right.”

He shoved himself Jaemin inside slowly at first, then all at once, letting out a vulgar moan. It hurt. Not that it was a surprise, at this point - all Jaemin knew these days was pain. But it hurt, really really badly, a burning and ripping in places that he didn’t think could or should rip. The worst part wasn’t the physical pain - it was the way that it felt all wrong, listening to the repulsive animalistic grunts of the man inside him and knowing how much he enjoyed it.

It didn’t feel anything remotely close to good. One would assume that because it was sex, in whatever emotionless definition of the word, it would at least bear some resemblance to the feeling of it. But Jaemin’s entire body was on fire in the worst way, and as the man moved ruthlessly inside him, he felt humiliated, completely, utterly, belittled.

“N-no,” Jaemin cried out, but then the other man was kneeling in front of him, forcing his face up to look at him. His eyes were hooded in desire, and Jaemin could see the outline of an erection in his pants.

“Be a good boy,” he growled. His thick fingers pried Jaemin’s mouth open, and when Jaemin bit down on them, he slapped the bruises on his back so that Jaemin could only gasp in pain. The man undid his pants, and thrust his cock into Jaemin’s mouth.

After that, Jaemin couldn’t even struggle anymore. He was trapped from all sides, degraded completely. He went limp - all he could do was cry, hot tears running down his cheeks and collecting at the bottom of his lip, falling off in fat droplets. The cock in his mouth pushed so deep in that he gagged and almost threw up. He could hardly breathe, hardly see through his tears.

After what felt like an eternity, he felt hot cum shoot down his throat. It tasted bitter.

“Swallow it,” the man said, hand poised above his back in threat.

Jaemin swallowed. It left a sticky feeling in his throat, and mingled with the salty taste of his tears.

Not long after, the grunts from the other man turned into filthy, drawn out moans, and suddenly, Jaemin felt him pull out. He felt cum spurt all over his back, some of it getting into the cuts from the whipping and making them sting.

Jaemin looked up, and caught a glimpse of the torturer from before, standing at the door watching. Maybe Jaemin’s mind was playing tricks on him, but he swore he could see him wink.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there, slumped down onto the ground, unsure what to do and unable to move, but eventually, the man roughly wiped Jaemin’s back with the pants they had ripped off him earlier, and the other one tossed Jaemin a bottle of water. They watched him drink it, then, when he was finished, grabbed him roughly and forced him to stand up.

The torturer handed Jaemin a pile of clothes. “You’re finished, now,” he said. “There’s a car waiting outside to take you to the dorms. Someone will be by to deal with the injuries.”

Jaemin hesitated - somehow, he wondered whether it was a trick. The idea of being free to go after so long in the dungeons seemed almost foreign.

“What?” the man asked, losing his patience. “Do you want more punishment?”

Jaemin shook his head.

“Then go.”

He did then, back aching in all the wrong ways and innocent heart left shattered in the SM dungeons.

He left, praying that he’d never be back.


	7. After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! I am posting kinda of on time for once! Hopefully I'll post on time more in 2019 :D
> 
> Summary of previous chapter, for those that didn't read it: In the dungeons, Jaemin underwent torture that involved whipping, isolation, and rape. It was as bad as you imagine, if not worse.

_September 2016_

When Jaemin saw the outside world for the first time since he entered the dungeons, the sun was setting, or rising - he didn’t know which, but the sky was painted in golden-orange and purple, like a reminder of how beautiful the world could be just after he had seen the worst of it. He looked out of the car window and watched the normal people on the sidewalk going about their normal lives, none of them knowing what true pain felt like the way that Jaemin did now.

He arrived at the dream dorms, and walked up to the door shakily. For some reason, he hesitated before entering. He felt empty and broken, and part of him didn’t want the members to see him this way.

The other part wanted to run into their arms, and cry until he could erase every trace of the touch of the torturers on his skin.

After standing there for a while, he turned around, and nervously asked the driver to take him to the 127 dorms. He needed the older members, he realised, the ones that had become almost fathers to him.

Surprisingly, the driver agreed. Jaemin was taken to the older members’ dorm, and this time the driver didn’t stay. He was left in front of the door like an unwanted child.

Jaemin didn't have a key to this dorm - he supposed the older ones didn't want dreamies crashing their place and bothering them. Taeyong had said that they could call if they needed them, anyways.

He knocked on the door, and waited anxiously for someone to come. There was a possibility that no one would come for a while, he thought, since he didn’t even know what time of day it was. For a second, he regretted coming here at all, and started to turn and leave again. He could go back to the dream dorms, maybe.

Then the door opened. A voice uttered his name disbelievingly: reverently, almost. For then, Jaemin didn’t hear the tinge of horror, or remember the bloodstains on his back. As he turned around and fell into Taeyong’s embrace, burying his face into the man’s chest, he knew for sure that this was home, and he wouldn’t lose it for anything.

The other members ventured up to him slowly. They were excited to see him back, but scared, approaching Jaemin like he was made of glass.

It was probably true - Jaemin felt like he might shatter at any second.

Eventually, most of the members backed away to observe from a distance, or pretend they were going off to do something. No matter how much they wanted to help Jaemin, and know what had happened to him, there was something about the way Jaemin held himself and the strangely blank expression on his face that made it seem dangerous to ask.

Taeyong, Jaehyun, and Ten took Jaemin to one of their rooms. For a while, they just sat together on the bed, watching Jaemin. The boy had his head bowed and hands clasped in his lap. He was shaking ever so slightly, but otherwise, he was motionless.

“Jaemin, we’re here for you, okay? It doesn’t matter if you can’t talk about it, or anything… we’re here to look after you now,” Taeyong said.

At that point, the walls broke in Jaemin’s mind. He cried completely, finally, breath coming in uneven gasps and arms wrapped tight around Jaehyun’s neck. He cried until he was shaking violently and he couldn’t stop, until it seemed impossible for more tears to come. His voice, broken and hoarse from the last few days, caught in his throat and felt like knives, but he didn’t stop until he had hardly enough energy to draw another breath.

It felt cleansing. The tears seemed to wash away some of the fear and pain, enough that Jaemin could look his hyungs in the eye and ask “What time is it? And what day?”

It was Tuesday, they told him, 3 days after they had entered the dungeons. About 6 o'clock in the evening. The other members were getting ready to have dinner, and Ten went off to grab something for them to eat.

“Are you going to ask me what happened?” Jaemin asked. He felt numb again, except for the everpresent dirtiness that seemed to have embedded itself under his skin, refusing to leave.

“Do you want to tell us?” Jaehyun replied, looking at Jaemin carefully. He was reminded of a rescue cat: Jaehyun wanted desperately to help him and make everything better somehow, but he was scared that Jaemin was scared, so all he could do was watch him and wait for a reaction.

Jaemin looked away. Part of Jaehyun’s heart broke.

For the next few hours, Jaemin operated as if he was a robot. He ate his food as if it had no taste, and avoided everyone’s eyes. When a nurse turned up to deal with his injuries, he stood frozen until he was forcibly picked up and laid down so that his wounds could be dressed.

That was the first time Taeyong saw the cuts. Ten and Jaehyun had left by then, when Taeyong had shooed them out of them room so that Jaemin could have some more space. Only Taeyong saw the wounds: the dark blue bruises, and the jagged open cuts running down his back, several inches long. The blood was everywhere - dried and cracked rivers running between mountains of mutilated flesh. It was only when the nurse cleaned some of it away that he could see how deep the cuts themselves were. Taeyong watched as Jaemin clenched his fists and hissed out a breath through his teeth, trying to contain the stinging pain as his wounds were touched.

He wondered what had caused them, and had the tingling feeling that whatever he imagined wouldn’t be as bad as the truth.

The bandages, when finished, looked like bad photoshop - like a haphazard attempt to hide something that went horribly wrong. Irrationally, Taeyong felt like fighting someone, anyone, for the plain injustice that this happened to his precious boy Jaemin.

When the nurse left, Jaemin lay gingerly down on his front on the bed, and started to fall asleep. In the hazy state between sleep and waking, he heard Jaehyun come in, and Taeyong and Jaehyun whispering about him. He wanted them to stop - he didn’t want them to worry about him. But he was exhausted, so instead, he let sleep take him.

…

It came in wisps, at first: the beginning of a scream and the hint of darkness, sneaking into Jaemin’s mind as he slept. Then he saw the ugly, distorted faces of the torturers, leaning in close and smiling, smirking, sneering. Blank white rooms opened out in his nightmare, ones that spread out forever and ever with no end. Even as he tried to run, no change or escape came - only cruel laughter and disgusting moans from somewhere far off. Cold metal morphed into whips, into vicious hands touching and hitting, and into nothingness that pressed down on him until he could hardly breathe. He heard the swish of the whip, and braced himself for the impact, but it never came and instead there was a face pressed up too close to his and it mutated into something unrecognisable and Jaemin screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

He woke up to Jaehyun shaking him carefully and Taeyong sitting up beside him, muttering worriedly. He flinched away from them both as if he had been touched by fire. Jaemin was hyperventilating, and his fists were clenched tightly, knuckles turned white. He wanted to shout at them to leave him alone, to not touch him, to go away. In the darkness, their forms looked like they could be the managers, back to take him again.

“Jaemin-ah, are you okay? Do you need us to do anything?” Jaehyun asked. He sat very still, afraid to startle Jaemin.

Jaemin was silent for a long time. Jaehyun could see that he was thinking, trying to organise his feelings and fears into something that he could understand.

“No,” Jaemin said finally, “I don’t need anything. Just, leave me be. Let me forget.”

“Are you sure?” Jaehyun asked.

Jaemin lay back down. He closed his eyes, and tried and failed to understand what he wanted.

“It’s better this way,” he said, in the end.

…

_November 2016_

Practices started increasing around November, preparing for end of year show performances and comebacks scheduled for the next year. By then, the company seemed to have forgotten what they had done to Jaemin - he was expected to act like he was alright and attend practice normally like the rest of the members. They didn’t care that the wounds on his back were far from healed, still aching in ways that mere cuts shouldn’t ache. They didn’t see the way that Jaemin shied away from men, the way that when the 00’ liner boys were messing around flirting and touching, he’d be overcome with a sense of panic when things went too far. They didn’t know that half the nights he woke up trembling, mind racing after another nightmare, so that he was almost too scared to sleep. Some days he felt like he was empty inside, like there was nothing left to continue for - other days there was a monster inside him, screaming at him to hate the entire world.

Jaemin went to practice. He learnt the dances, and the songs, and pretended that he wasn’t broken. When his back started to ache more and more after each practice, he kept it to himself.

He knew that he had to obey: every member knew it now, and knew that it wasn’t something to be risky about. The entirety of NCT acted the perfect good boys, not daring to slip up for even a second.

It may have just been Jaemin’s imagination, but the pain in his back seemed to worsen as the days progressed, to the point where it was always there, pulsing within him. He tried to ignore it while he danced, but he felt himself grow weaker. Too often, he messed up a move, and froze in fear as the staff scolded him.

One day, it was worse than ever. The pain seemed alive, sitting in his spine and flaring up when he moved too fast. As the practice continued, he felt his mind get fuzzy, the only clear thought being that it hurt, and this wasn’t right, something had gone more wrong than even the managers had thought.

He wanted to stop dancing and ask for help, but he was too scared. Instead he kept going, gritting his teeth against the pain and willing it away.

At a floor part of the choreography, he realised that he couldn’t get up. His body felt like it had given up. Instead, Jaemin lay there, listening to the music come to a sudden stop and the yelling of the people around him.

He couldn’t move. He vaguely saw Jeno kneeling beside him, and Jaemin tried to say something, but he didn’t know what.

“Jaemin?” a voice asked behind him, but he didn’t manage to reply.

His vision went grey, then black, and after that he knew nothing.


	8. White

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hihihi here I am with another chapter (yes I'm getting earlier at updating woohoo go me) 
> 
> Just a note: the SM Entertainment statement is an English translation of the actual one, in case u were wondering
> 
> Otherwise, have fun and enjoy this chapter :)

_November 2016_

White.

Jaemin hated white; feared the blankness, detested the cleanness. When he saw white he saw the dungeons: the room where the lottery took place, and the walls of the corridors, and that room, that hateful room, cold and blank and merciless.

And now, the hospital.

The place looked strangely similar to the dungeons. The white was ubiquitous and numbing, and harsh artificial lights lined the ceilings. Jaemin sat up in the hospital bed and looked up at them, staring at the lights until his eyes hurt.

His back hurt. It wasn’t surprising anymore. He almost couldn’t remember what it was like to not be in pain all the time, although realistically he had been fine just three months ago. The cuts themselves were closed by then, but purple-red scars ran across his back, still tender to the touch. The bigger ones had been stitched up when he was admitted to hospital. It was far too late to save his skin by then - Jaemin had overheard doctors berating the managers for waiting months to do this, for allowing the wounds to half heal and then reopen dozens of times. He would never do a shirtless performance, at this rate. Jaemin decided that was a good thing.

The cuts weren’t the real problem, anyways. The doctors had discovered that there was a problem with his spine, a herniated disc that had started from the trauma received in the dungeons and worsened as he ignored it.

Long story short, his back hurt, was hurt, would continue to hurt in ways that would stop him from performing for who knows how long. The doctors and company were considering surgery; all Jaemin himself could do was lie around in hospital waiting for a decision and wishing fervently to be taken back home.

Home being the dream dorms, and the 6 boys there that made life seem worthwhile to him, among the blank white darkness that was all else he knew.

Some evenings they would call him, all 6 voices chiming in on top of each other to ask Jaemin how he was and tell him about their day and beg him to come back, as if it were Jaemin’s choice. He learnt that all the patterns in the choreo for My First And Last had been changed and they kept forgetting their place so their comeback was being delayed. They told him that they were planning to go to that cake making place they always used to go to as trainees for Chenle’s birthday. For the half hour or so that they talked, Jaemin felt alright - happy even, but he wasn’t sure if he remembered what happiness was supposed to feel like, so he couldn't be sure.

When they eventually hung up, the empty white pressed down on him. He knew loneliness intimately, in those times.

Other later nights, in the small hours just past midnight, Jeno would call him. Jaemin would always be awake already, his mind refusing to shut down in fear of the things that it could produce when he was asleep.

This type of call was the polar opposite: it was quiet, soft mumbles of “I really, really, miss you,” and “I can’t sleep” and “I want you here with me.” For long, strangely comfortable stretches of time, they said nothing - Jaemin listened to the sound of Jeno breathing and shuffling around in bed and felt complete in a way he thought he’d never feel again.

Jeno would ultimately fall asleep, and for too long, Jaemin would stay there, not wanting to return to the loneliness, hanging on to this little connection to home. As if they had been waiting for years, too shy to come out, the words “I love you” fell off his tongue.

Jeno was asleep; he did not hear. The confession dropped into the darkness, settling somewhere unknown. Jaemin hated himself for a second, before staring into the ceiling (grey, not white, in the darkness), and feeling numb.

For the first time, the nightmares were silent.

_February 2017_

It was Yuta that saw it first, when they were all sitting around at the dorms, gaming or watching movies or scrolling aimlessly through their phones, glad to have a break during limitless promotions but too tired to do anything much. SM Entertainment had released a statement about Jaemin and their decision to take him out of promotions.

They didn’t know what had happened to him, except that the boy was broken in more ways that one, and that this was because of the lottery, and the dungeons, and the company that employed them.

The hyungs all gathered around to listen. Yuta read it out mockingly, raising his voice and speaking in a pompous impression of their CEO.

“Hello. This is SM Entertainment.”

A few members giggled a little at his impression, but fell silent as the next words came out.

“We appreciate all the fans for the great attention on the teaser images of NCT Dream's first single mini album 'The First' that were revealed today. We're here to make an announcement for the fans who've waited for Jaemin.”

As Yuta spoke, Taeyong sat up straight, listening closely. He didn’t know what he was expecting - it wasn’t like SM was going to tell the truth, or anything close to it. Maybe he just hoped that there would be a nod to the fact that SM really had gone too far, an admission that what happened to Jaemin was way too much.

“Last year, Jaemin, who joined promotions for 'Chewing Gum', was been treated for a herniated disc since his trainee days. His condition has worsened and because we believe that artist's health is first priority and most important, we decided for him to focus on treatment and take a break for this promotions.”

Yuta was still talking, but Taeyong wasn’t listening anymore. The words at the end of that section stuck in his head, replaying over and over.

“We believe that artist's health is first priority and most important,” SM had said, and Taeyong realised that he hated the company, so so much. He hated the way that they could say something like this after they were the ones that had caused the injury, and hated the fact that the fans would believe them and praise the company for ‘caring’ for the idols.

He didn’t realise he was standing up, fists clenched as if he were ready to fight, until he saw the other members looking at him with something akin to fear in their eyes, and Jaehyun was by his side, telling him to calm down, that there was nothing they could do, that this statement, at least, couldn’t hurt Jaemin more than they already had.

Taeyong didn’t feel any less angry, but the touch of his boyfriend made him relax enough to speak properly. He didn’t raise his voice, but his quiet and serious tone addressed each and every member.

“You guys heard that, right? SM doesn’t care. They’ll hurt us and tell our fans that they’re helping us.” Taeyong started to leave, still vibrating with fury, then changed his mind and stared each member in the eye in turn.

“I’m sure you all understand that we are not making mistakes again - nothing reckless, nothing risky. We are never, I repeat never, going to let any of us get hurt again.”

The next words are softer - they seem to be directed mainly towards himself.

“I’ll never blame you guys, if you do mess up. But please, please, I beg you, try. I can’t bear to see another one of you hurt.”

The underlying meaning was that Taeyong would blame himself instead. Jaehyun opened his mouth to comfort him, but Taeyong shook him off and walked away, slamming the door behind him.

No one dared go after him.

\---

It took almost an hour of pacing around uncertainly and nervously until Jaehyun worked up the courage to go see how Taeyong was. After years together, he knew that Taeyong in this state was not to be messed with, no matter how much Jaehyun knew Taeyong loved him. Upset Taeyong was a Taeyong that hid himself, that only let Jaehyun (and ONLY Jaehyun) in after he had fizzled out on his own. Maybe Taeyong thought himself dangerous. Maybe he was.

When Jaehyun was able to find him, and allowed in to see him, Taeyong was soft and sad, all the fire from earlier gone. Jaehyun gathered him into his arms and held him. He didn’t speak, because they both knew nothing could make the reality of their danger better. Instead, he let Taeyong cling onto him, muttering about how much he hated SM, until even his words themselves had run out.

Jaehyun held him. He wished he could say that it was a promise that things would be better, or some sort of protection from things getting worse, but it wasn’t. All he could give was comfort, and a shoulder to cry on when everything was hopeless.

“You know I love you, right?” Jaehyun said, and watched tenderly as Taeyong nodded. For the leader that gave his everything to NCT, and somehow found a way to give his everything to his boyfriend as well, twice over, it was the most, and the least, he could do.

_May 2017_

Jaemin was better. That was what he told himself, and his therapist, and anyone else when they asked how he was. He was better. He could go weeks without nightmares, and his back really had stopped hurting, apart from small aches when he wasn’t careful with his exercise treatments.

But the anxiety was a different thing. Anxiety was the monster that stayed under his skin, even when the rest of the pain and brokenness left. It was the unnecessary warning in his mind when he saw too much metal and white, and those strange moments when something tiny would remind him of those 3 days in the dungeons and he would spiral into the memories and lose himself.

When Jeno had asked him, innocently, whether he’d ever been with a guy before, in, you know, THAT way, he had broken down and cried, until his breaths didn’t work properly anymore and he was shaking so much he couldn’t form words.

In the end he had told Jeno everything: explained what had happened in the dungeons that meant that he could hardly let Jeno touch him without feeling terrible, and what the scars on his back really were from.

Jeno listened. Listened, and told him that he understood, and somehow, Jaemin felt relieved, after it had all come out for the first time.

So, anyways. Jaemin was better. He took medication that filled the empty broken parts inside him, and did exercises that made his back feel better. When he couldn’t sleep at night (which was still too often) he would just drink coffee the next morning and feel absolutely fine.

If he was honest with himself, he drank too much coffee. The members could see from the darkness of his drink how broken he was that day. When he felt like the dungeons were trying to come back, or when anxiety woke up in the morning faster than his own mind did, he had coffee, and it made everything worse, but he didn’t care because… because without it he’d be tired and dead and helpless.

Other than that. Jaemin was better. Or at least, he was functional.

“Don’t worry about me,” he told Taeyong, and Jaehyun, and Jeno. If he said it enough times, he thought they might believe it, even if it wasn’t true. Maybe even Jaemin himself would believe it. “I’m not broken, not anymore.”

_July 2017_

As the 8 months since the lottery passed, Jeno didn’t miss Jaemin any less - only in different ways. Yes, Jaemin was back, living in the dream dorms, and yes, he even came to school with Jeno every now and then (not that they went to school much these days because, well, promotions), but Jeno wanted more. He was absurdly ungrateful in that way, because every time he got a bit of Jaemin back, all he wanted was everything else and then 100% more than even that.

Mostly, Jeno wanted his best friend back: the boy that smiled like the world itself was inherently entertaining and tried to kiss him without warning or reason, the boy who Jeno had always had a massive crush on and who he loved more than he could imagine loving anyone else.

So Jeno did his best - he stayed by Jaemin’s side (not touching, never touching anymore, unless Jaemin initiated) and listened to him when he needed to talk, coaxed smiles out of him when they were absent for too long, told him silly stories to make him forget. They took to sleeping in the same bed, and only at night, when nightmares threatened to return, and sleep refused to come, did Jaemin let Jeno hold him.

_August 2017_

We Young promotions made Jeno feel lonely, to be honest. Mark and Donghyuck were fighting, so the atmosphere around them felt dangerous and miserable. Even though Jaemin had never been part of the song, Jeno kept looking for him in waiting rooms and the backstage darkness, and felt strangely empty whenever he remembered he wasn’t there.

When Jeno had time, he spent it with Jaemin. He didn’t know how he could fix him, but the stubborn, desperate part of him refused to stop trying. If he could make the boy smile every day, he thought, if he could just do that, then they would be okay, one day.

“Gimme a kiss before I go to work,” Jeno said early one morning, before he got up to get ready for the music shows. Jaemin was probably asleep - Jeno only said it as a joke, anyways, he told himself. A joke, fueled by the growing need he had for the other boy, unfiltered at times like this. It wasn’t like he expected Jaemin to oblige, or even hear-

Jaemin turned around, and sleepily planted a kiss on Jeno’s cheek.

Later, in the surreal mix of tiredness and adrenaline that characterised music show days, Jeno slowed down for a second and remembered the kiss. He touched his fingertips to the spot on his cheek, and smiled to himself in disbelief. Maybe, just maybe, Jaemin really was getting better.


	9. Shaken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so so so sorry everyone, but I was just... really depressed and unmotivated for a week, so I skipped a week and didn't post. I'm back now though, and hopefully this will be finished off without more mishaps
> 
> Please enjoy this! Thank you all for waiting <3

_February 2018_

To Jaehyun, music shows and performing on stages was easy. It was a rhythm that he knew well by then: waking up in the early hours and getting his makeup done half asleep, performing and recording again and again, becoming numb to the feeling of a dozen people touching him and hundreds watching him.

It was only in the half darkness backstage, minutes before they went on to do their final live recording of Boss for that day, that Jaehyun stopped and noticed that Jungwoo was… not okay.

The younger man was fiddling with his fingers and looking around the place nervously, eyes darting from the stage, to his hands, to the members around him. When Jaehyun went closer, he heard the breath catching in Jungwoo’s throat, and the muttered words berating himself not to make a mistake.

“Jungwoo,” Jaehyun said, and watched as Jungwoo drew back, startled. “Are you alright?”

“I’m-” Jungwoo started to answer, but bit his lip, visibly stopping himself from admitting that he was nervous. “Hyung, what if I mess up? What if I make a mistake on stage?”

Jaehyun wanted to say that it wouldn’t matter, that even if he messed up, it would be okay, but he couldn’t be sure, not when the one year that had passed safely felt like paper thin glass, ready to break at the smallest touch. Instead, he just put his arm around Jungwoo.

“You won’t make a mistake, Jungwoo, don’t worry. You’ll do great.”

Jungwoo nodded, but he didn’t look like he believed it. Jaehyun wished he could say more, but the performance before them was ending and they were going up and into their starting positions on stage.

The lights flared around them, and the performance began.

There was something about dancing and singing live on stage that felt different to everything else they did. It was like entering another dimension: 4 minutes of another life, in which all Jaehyun knew was to sing perfectly and look into the camera like he was the owner of the entire universe. Nothing else mattered in those moments, just the lights and the dance and the way that the team meshed together and became one stage. The members moved perfectly around him, and he lost himself in performing at his very best.

But then, it shattered.

Jaehyun noticed it almost immediately: in the last chorus section, when Jungwoo was at the front of the choreo, Jungwoo skipped a step, and went to the wrong place.

Jaehyun could see the exact split second that Jungwoo realised his mistake. Jungwoo froze, looking to the side in confusion. He tried to correct himself, but even so, everything was wrong and off and his panic made it all worse. The performance teetered off kilter, one essential part missing.

It took 2 whole, agonising, lines - 2 too many - for Jungwoo to get back in time, with the right moves back in his mind after they had blanked out for those seconds. By then, they were all shaken, continuing the performance only through motor memory. Jaehyun’s enjoyment of the stage disappeared, and he finished the rest numbly, only remembering to look nice for the camera at the very end.

When they got off, Jungwoo collapsed in the hallway, head in his hands. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he buried himself away, refusing to look at the other members.

He had failed. The nervousness from earlier had given in to reality, and finally, into regret: bitter, all consuming regret.

Lucas and Doyoung were quick to go to him, with comforting words that meant nothing and arms to fall into, cry into. “It’s okay, you’ll do better next time,” they repeated, and although Jungwoo didn’t believe it, he nodded and told them thank you.

Taeyong stood a little apart from them all. His brows were knitted in worry: on the one hand, he wanted to tell Jungwoo that everything was fine, but on the other hand, the threat of the lottery and the dungeons hung over him, making him see every mistake as potentially dangerous. Everything was not fine: nothing had ever been fine and nothing would ever be fine, not after that first lottery.

All Taeyong wanted was for them to be safe.

Back in the waiting room, Taeyong went up to Jungwoo. Jungwoo shrunk away, but Taeyong gently placed a hand under his chin, making Jungwoo look him in the eyes.

“Jungwoo. Listen. It’s not your fault,” he said. “Please don’t feel bad about it.”

“But hyung… don’t you hate me for it? Aren’t you angry?”

“It’s just one mistake.” Taeyong grabbed Jungwoo’s hand, and held it in his reassuringly. “As long as you make sure to fix it, no one will blame you.”

Jungwoo sniffled a bit. “Really? So there are no consequences?”

Taeyong wasn’t sure about that, not at all. In the back of his mind, every thought was telling him that this was it, this was the last straw, they were going back to the dungeons and there was nothing he could do about it.

But looking at the tiny, heartbroken man in front of him, there was no way he could tell him this.

“No, no consequences.” Taeyong smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s okay, Jungwoo. Don’t worry. Nothing bad will happen.”

\---

Getting called to the CEO’s office was not a particularly concerning thing to Taeyong. It happened often: whenever they wanted to go over an issue with NCT, or to discuss a new comeback.

This time though, it was just after they got back from that performance, and he walked in to cold disappointed faces. He stood before the desk, and got the sinking feeling that what he had hoped against for so long was coming true.

“Taeyong. I’ll keep this short.” The CEO leaned forward a little, as if he were to divulge a secret. “You know how to get to the dungeons, right?”

Taeyong’s mouth went dry. “Y-yes,” he stuttered out.

“You have one hour to collect all of your members and bring them there. Go now.”

“Wait,” Taeyong said, “Is this about Jungwoo? It was just one mistake!”

The CEO only looked at him witheringly, and didn’t answer.

Taeyong walked out of the office, but could hardly feel his feet carrying him. This was, after a year of safety, his worst nightmares coming true again. Wildly, he considered running away: taking all the members and just refusing to come back.

But what would he do in that situation? He couldn’t leave all his hopes and dreams as an idol behind like that, and none of the rest could either.

Instead, he went back to the dorms, hating himself a little for having to deliver this news, and even more for being too cowardly to just leave.

“Guys,” he said when he got there and gathered everyone around, but then stopped. When he tried to say the next words, his voice failed him, and instead he stood in front of them, breaking down inside. He was the leader. He should have been strong, but instead, he felt himself shatter.

Jaehyun moved to stand next to him, an arm around him. “What’s wrong?” he said quietly.

Taeyong replied in only a hoarse whisper. “The dungeons-”

“We’re going back there?”

Taeyong bit his lip, and nodded.

Fear flashed through Jaehyun’s eyes. He swallowed stiffly, and tried not to show the panic that planted itself in his mind at the news.

“Babe, it’s okay, I’ll deal with the members, just stay calm, okay?” Jaehyun visibly gathered himself up, and with a dead, empty, expression in his eyes, told the rest of them that they had to go back to the dungeons.

The initial reaction was shock: a dozen pairs of eyes wide open, disbelief painted on their faces. They had thought it was over, forgotten about it through sheer hope after 2017 had passed without a single lottery. Hope was powerful, and dangerous, in that way.

After that, they were angry: at the company, at themselves, at the sheer injustice of the world. Why them? Why did they have to go through this again? None of the older members knew what exactly had happened to Jaemin in the dungeons, but the sight of the broken boy was enough to tell them that the dungeons were horrifically, evilly, damaging.

Oh. Jaemin.

“We have to tell the dreamies as well,” Taeyong realised. ”Is… is Jaemin going to have to come?” Even as he said it, he knew, fiercely, in his heart that he wouldn’t let Jaemin go back, even if he was told to. They could do anything to him, as long as Jaemin didn’t have to go to the dungeons with them.

“Jaemin still has therapy today,” Ten offered, and Taeyong breathed out through gritted teeth in semi-relief. At least Jaemin was going to be okay this time.

The rest of them weren’t.

They collected the dreamies from their dorms, not telling them what was happening. The boys were almost adults by then, but the idea hardly registered in the older member’s minds. All they knew was to protect. It was the first instinct for them, when faced with the fear and danger: protect the kids.

It was easier, and less scary, than thinking about protecting themselves.

The way to the dungeons was dark and twisting, and they got lost plenty of times. Taeyong led them, only guided by memories from the last time there. Every time they had to turn back, Jaehyun hoped they’d get lost again, and never make it there.

Eventually, they were descending a flight of stairs, spiralling into the darkness. Jaehyun wished he could reach out to the others, to comfort them or comfort himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to. Instead, he walked with his eyes on the stairs in front of him, and tried to stop his breaths from shaking.

When they entered, there was a manager there, waiting for them already.

“Welcome,” he said. His voice was chilling.

“You have arrived late,” he continued, eyeing Taeyong in disappointment. “But I’ll ignore that for now.”

The members each sat down. Jaehyun’s heart beat a sharp staccato rhythm against his ribcage, fast and insistent and anxious. This can’t be real, his mind protested, and he wished over and over again that it was right.

It was only as the manager explained the lottery that the true severity of their danger properly sunk in for Jaehyun. The twisted truths and sweetly coated knives in the manager’s speech only made the evil underneath even more obvious, and Jaehyun felt as if he would explode from the dread building up within him. He wanted the lottery itself to just happen, so that he wouldn’t have to suffer through this anticipation for any longer.

“Kim Jungwoo, please come here,” the manager finally said.

Jaehyun turned to see Jungwoo getting up shakily. His movements were stiff and small, as if he were a doll turned brittle from misuse. His eyes darted to his hyungs, begging for help, but what could they do? Jaehyun watched Jungwoo walk up to the manager, and bit on his own tongue to stop himself from speaking out.

He knew, by then, that protesting would only make things worse.

“Earlier today, NCT U went to Inkigayo to perform their song Boss,” the manager said. “During the performance, one member made a huge mistake, causing the stage to be ruined.”

Jungwoo bowed his head. Jaehyun saw a tear fall from his eye, catching on his eyelashes and falling to the ground in slow motion.

“That member was Jungwoo, and the extent to which the performance failed was so much that we decided that punishment was in order. Hopefully, after this, you will all learn to care about your performance more, and refrain from making such mistakes.”

The manager turned to the lottery jar, filled with light pink cards that spelled out their fate. For a second that felt like an eternity, he paused, before plunging his hand in and picking out one card.

Jaehyun held his breath, and dug his nails into his fingers. ‘Not the kids,’ he thought, and then as the manager started to read the card, he thought selfishly (and too late), ‘not me.’

The manager looked at them, and opened his mouth.

“Jung Jaehyun,” he said. “You will receive the punishment.”


	10. Helpless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a day late oof
> 
> This is the longest chapter yet! I guess I have a lot to say about torture ¯\\(°_o)/¯
> 
> Once again, check the tags, and remember that this is another of those Very Explicit Chapters
> 
> I hope you like it!

_February 2018_

No. It couldn’t be. Jaehyun swung his head around in panic, unable to believe what he had heard. His mind refused to accept that he had been chosen, that he would be punished. It was only because of the pitying, fearing eyes looking at him that the idea of his doom sank in.

He was going into the dungeons.

The way into the dungeons themselves was a blur - he could remember nothing other than the voice in his mind, telling him that he needed to run away right that second. He noticed doors lining a blank white hallway, but mostly, he just stared at the managers leading him, as if hoping that they would have mercy.

After a while of walking, Jaehyun was pushed roughly into a room, and he fell forward onto his knees. Before he could get his bearings, he heard the door click shut behind him. A few seconds later, another click came: he was locked in.

Okay. Alright.

Now what?

Jaehyun scrambled to his feet, looking around anxiously. He was alone. Maybe, just maybe, there was a way for him to escape, while the managers weren’t watching him. Approaching the door, he looked for some view of the outside hallway, but there was no window, and no gaps in the sides of the door.

Desperately, Jaehyun searched every inch of the room, but all he found was white walls and a drain, tucked discreetly in the corner. After looking everywhere and finding nothing, he gave up, sat down and tried to come up with an idea of what he should do. Whenever he thought he heard footsteps outside, he looked up sharply, waiting for a manager to come. He was ready to run - he could feel the sudden shots of adrenaline whenever he thought the door might open.

It never did. What seemed like hours passed, as Jaehyun waited for something to happen. The willpower he thought he had earlier slipped away, turning into panic as he realised there was no way out, and finally, even the panic got tired, and he felt only detached.

In the nothingness, his mind wandered to Jaemin. He wondered whether the younger boy had been through this: laid in this same room, listening to the silence and waiting for an answer. He wondered whether the hallways he had walked through held Jaemin’s footsteps, and whether the ghosts of Jaemin’s innocence lingered in these walls.

The time stretched on - his throat was dry, so dry, and his limbs were heavy and tired. Jaehyun fixed his eyes on the whiteness above him and felt the world go black.

_Dream Dorms_

Jaemin didn’t know what he expected had happened when he returned from therapy to see empty dorms and items strewn about as if his friends had left in a hurry. Definitely not the worst: he had really gotten better, in this way. Maybe they had gone to hang out somewhere all of a sudden, he considered, or the hyungs had invited them over.

There was a jiggling of the door handle. Jaemin startled a bit, then realised it was just the dreamies coming back. He opened the door, smiling, ready to greet them, but his smile faded when he took in their expressions.

“Jaemin-ah…” Renjun said, but then trailed off. He looked at the others uneasily, silently asking what to do.

“What? What is it?” Jaemin felt the seeds of anxiety settle into him again, familiar from the past year of frequent panic attacks. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“We had to go back to the dungeons,” Mark said finally, looking as if he had aged ten years.

Jaemin’s next words were whispered, so soft they were almost silent. “Who was it?”

“Jaehyun,” Mark replied. His shoulders visibly sagged, and Jaemin went forward, enveloping him and the other dreamies in a hug.

“He’s strong,” Jaemin mumbled into the embrace, even though he knew that no one was strong enough to stay unbroken through the dungeons. He wanted to comfort the others, maybe only because it would give him something to think about, rather than falling into the memories and drowning.

“Will he be okay?” Mark asked. Jaemin didn’t answer.

In his imagination, he heard Jaehyun start to scream.

_The Dungeons_

Jaehyun didn’t know how long it had been. The white stayed the same, maddeningly unchanging, and crazy voices snaked their way into Jaehyun’s mind, telling him things that couldn’t be true.

He listened. There was nothing better to do in the silence.

At some point, an ache started in his stomach: the familiar feeling of hunger. Jaehyun ignored it. Being hungry wasn’t the worst of his concerns at that point.

But then he realised that there seemed no sign of the managers coming back any time soon, and the hunger seemed to increase by a notch, now more urgent and horrifying. He was going to be left here forever, he thought, with no food or water or anything. He was going to die like this, locked here surrounded by blank white walls and unforgiving emptiness.

Time dripped - no, not dripped, because that would imply some sort of rhythm. It swelled, spread, pulled, lingering in the corners of Jaehyun’s mind that were the beginning of insanity and pooling in the bottom of his heart. He licked his dry lips, and felt his stomach cramp sharply in need of food.

Give me nothingness, he begged, prayed; give me numbness and empty oblivion.

Later, he almost wished the blankness had not listened.

_127 Dorms_

Waiting for Jaehyun to return felt like a ticking bomb - every member was strung tight, unable to focus or function properly with the knowledge that Jaehyun was somewhere in the SM Dungeons, being hurt more as every second passed. Jungwoo, especially, was anxious and restless, pacing around and berating himself for everything he had done wrong. The guilt was eating at him, making it difficult for him to think of anything other than Jaehyun.

The other members had told him that Jaemin was gone for 3 days, and he wondered what could happen to Jaehyun in that same time. So much. Too much.

And all of it, his fault.

Jungwoo didn’t know how he could hate himself more than he already had since they first entered the dungeons because of him, but he did. With every hour that went past without Jaehyun returning, he fell deeper into the hole of guilt and self-hatred. He was worthy of nothing: he himself deserved death, or the punishment that Jaehyun was taking. The other members comforted him sometimes, telling him that it was okay and that no one blamed him, but the words sounded empty to Jungwoo’s ears.

The guilt washed over him, and gladly, he let it take him.

_The Dungeons_

At some point, the hunger faded. What had started as a dull ache, and then intensified into sharp, biting cramps, dissolved into nothingness, as if Jaehyun’s body had forgotten that he was hungry. Instead, he felt nothing: a numb emptiness that ate at his spirits and left his mind hoping for something to break the monotony.

Jaehyun absent-mindedly played with his fingernails, running the pad of his thumb over the edges and marvelling at how they seemed to have grown a little since he had last checked. Maybe he had spent longer in the dungeons than he thought.

He was bored: so bored that it hurt. He felt like his mind was touching a knife - not being cut, because that would be a real feeling. It was just touching: slowly feeling out the sharp edge, micrometres away from getting cut but never quite getting there.

His nails really were a lot longer - so long that the edge was softly pointed and clawed, probably from scratching at the walls at some point. He looked at them with interest.

Part of Jaehyun really wanted to feel hungry again. The hunger had made him feel alive - if he was hurting, there was no way he was dead, right? Without the pain, he knew nothing.

Experimentally, Jaehyun dragged his nails across his forearm. It left white trails, which faded to red, and then nothing.

It felt almost good. He did it again, but dug deeper. Pinpricks of blood made their way to the surface. The sting lasted a good few minutes - Jaehyun counted the seconds, and smiled maniacally as he watched the lines fade.

After that, he didn’t know how to stop. The pain was blissful, in comparison to the nothingness. He sat and revelled in it, with angry red marks crisscrossing both of his arms and thighs, and blood drying beneath his nails.

The hunger pangs bloomed back to life a little while afterwards, and only then did Jaehyun know regret.

_127 Dorms_

Doyong was trying (and failing) to focus on watching a movie, when Jungwoo approached him. The younger man looked like he hadn’t slept in days, and it was probably true. It wasn’t like Jungwoo was trying to hide how much he was hurting.

“What’s up?” he asked, turning to face Jungwoo. Doyoung didn’t quite manage to mask the annoyance in his voice. He was happy to see him, he really was, but when everything seemed hopeless and he was burning in the worry and stress of it all, he just wanted to be alone.

“When Jaemin had to get… punished,” Jungwoo asked, “He was gone three days, right?”

Doyoung nodded.

“It’s been five days already.”

Doyoung sighed. “And...?” he said, dragging the word out slowly.

“Jaehyun…”

Doyoung’s eyes closed momentarily, and he took a deep breath. When he opened them again, there was fiery irritation dancing in them. “What? Do you think I’m not worried? Do you think we’re not all worried? You didn’t fucking see Jaemin when he came back. You didn’t see how broken he was. What are you gonna do about Jaehyun, huh?”

Jungwoo opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He felt tears come to his eyes, and turned away.

Doyoung’s voice softened when he realised that his outburst had hurt Jungwoo. “Wait, I’m sorry-”

“Don’t, I deserve it,” Jungwoo replied, voice certain but shaking. “But you’re wrong. I am gonna do something about it.”

“What?”

Jungwoo didn’t answer. He ran out of the dorms, and even though Doyoung ran after him, yelling at him to wait, he did not stop.

Jungwoo arrived at the SM Dungeons half an hour later, panting, with tears blurring his vision.

“Let me in,” he yelled, pounding on the door. ”Please, take me, let me in!”

The door opened: Jungwoo was grabbed roughly, and his hands held behind his back so he couldn’t move. Too late, Jungwoo realised that there was no way he could save Jaehyun, and he had come here only to get captured himself as well.

“Here to visit your friend, huh?” a voice asked, disgustingly close to his ear. “I’m sure he’ll love to have some company.”

Jungwoo shook his head violently, trying to get free. The manager holding him only laughed.

“Come, take a look at what you’ve done.”

_The Dungeons_

Jaehyun didn’t think he could take it for much longer. What must have been a few days ago, a manager had come and dumped a few bottles of water in front of him, and then left without a word. Seeing that door open had been hope - half a minute of sweet, powerful hope - that had left him shattered afterwards. For a long time, he refused to drink the water, just out of spite and self-pity.

After he woke up from fainting because of dehydration, he finally took a gulp, and then a few dozen more until empty bottles lay all around him and his stomach somehow hurt more than ever.

He thought it pathetic how he reacted when the door opened again, but that didn’t stop him from perking up and trying to stand, almost begging to be let out. This time, the manager actually stayed.

“You seem eager,” he said with a chuckle.

Jaehyun looked at him defiantly. His eyes said no, never, but his weakening body betrayed him when he stumbled a little trying to get up.

“Follow me, boy. We’re going somewhere else now.”

Jaehyun had really, genuinely believed he was free. Hope had planted itself in his chest, flourishing as they walked.

The room they entered had violent looking tools hanging everywhere, and a large metal frame that looked almost like a grill in the center.

This isn’t the way out, Jaehyun realised. This is the beginning of the worst of it.

Jaehyun thought he knew panic, before this, but in that moment, he realised he hadn’t: not true panic, not like this.

“Take your clothes off,” the manager said.

Jaehyun shook his head jerkily, looking around for an escape. A voice in his head was screaming ‘what the fuck is that thing, what is that, don’t touch it, don’t go near it, they’re here to hurt you, run away now’ and he couldn’t help but agree.

“Fine then, don’t listen.” The manager tapped his fingers against the frame casually, then looked up at Jaehyun. “So, Jaehyun, to tell the truth, you’re here earlier than planned,” he said conversationally. “We were going to keep you starving for a little longer, but we had an unexpected visitor, so you can thank him for this, I guess.”

“Wha-” Jaehyun said, but then the door was opening, and a man with brown hair was stumbling in, pushed by a stone-faced manager.

“Your friend Jungwoo came to visit,” the first manager said. He sounded almost gleeful. “We thought he might like to watch.”

Jaehyun looked, helpless, as Jungwoo was tied into a chair, and forced to make eye contact with Jaehyun. Jungwoo’s expression was of pure guilt and fear, and even as weak as Jaehyun was, he felt the urge to fight the managers for making his friend feel like this.

One of the managers went up to Jungwoo, grabbing a fistful of his hair and leaning in close. “You’re going to watch, do you understand? Don’t close your eyes, don’t look away. If you look away we’ll make it worse for him. Watch everything that happens.”

Jungwoo nodded, trembling.

“Good boy,” the manager spat. Jaehyun stared at him and seethed in disgust.

“Now, let’s try this again,” the other manager said. “Take your clothes off.”

Jaehyun shook his head. He stared at the man, paralysed.

The manager stalked up to Jungwoo, and grabbed his shoulder threateningly. “Do you want Jungwoo to get hurt?” he asked, looking at Jaehyun pointedly.

No, he thought, hysterically, please don’t hurt Jungwoo, but at the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to expose his skin like this, especially not in front of his friend.

The manager grabbed a whip from the side, and raised it above Jungwoo. Jaehyun looked at it, and gulped.

Slowly, shamefully, he took off his shirt, refusing to meet Jungwoo’s eyes as he did so. It felt like giving up, but he did it, ever conscious of the fear in Jungwoo’s gaze and all the eyes on him.

When he was completely naked, the manager grabbed him roughly, picking him up and shoving him onto the frame. He was surprisingly strong - or maybe Jaehyun was just weak, after the days he had spent in that room, starving. He pressed Jaehyun down, and tied his arms and legs up in leather straps.

Jaehyun tried to struggle, but he couldn’t move at all: the edges of the straps bit into his skin, and no matter how much he strained, all he could do was lie there, watching the manager as he prepared something to the side. He felt completely exposed, naked and vulnerable at the mercy of the manager.

Then a blindfold was being tied around Jaehyun’s eyes, and he could see nothing.

For a while, Jaehyun felt nothing: just the cold air against his skin and the metal pressed uncomfortably against his bare back.

A buzzing sound started up - Jaehyun struggled to guess what it was until suddenly, the object was pressed up against his dick and-

Oh. A vibrator.

Immediately after he realised that, a hand was applying some sort of oil around his cock and it felt like pin pricks and everything was suddenly far too sensitive. He felt himself get hard, in a strange painful way, and holy shit he hated it. It was so wrong - he felt like his body was betraying him, reacting as if it thought pleasure was supposed to happen when clearly everything was uncomfortable and painful, to the point where even the typically nice feeling of a vibrator felt too much and horrible and disgusting.

After a bit, the vibrator was taken away. By then, Jaehyun’s dick was sensitive: so sensitive that even the cold air on it felt like too much, and any touch was almost painful. With the blindfold on, his hearing was heightened, and he heard the sound metal objects clanking together, and then the crackle of something being plugged into an electrical socket.

Jungwoo started to yell in warning, but he was slapped, the sound echoing across the room. Jaehyun felt something cold, like wires, being wrapped around the base of his cock, and he bit down on his tongue to keep from crying out. He wondered what was happening, straining around frantically, but with his eyes covered and his limbs tied down, there was nothing he could do but lie there and take whatever happened next.

It came suddenly - excruciating pain, coursing through his entire body, but especially in his already over-sensitive dick. It was electrocution, he realised, before the next shock came and there was no space in his mind to realise anything more.

The pain was relentless. Every time he recovered for a second, the wires were being touched to somewhere else on his body and the agony was back, running through him and feeling like it was ripping his muscles apart. He cried out from the pure torment of it, and somewhere in the tiny still sane part of his mind, he heard Jungwoo begging the managers to stop.

It went on for so long that Jaehyun lost track of everything. He knew nothing but the white hot pain, burning in the worst places and capturing every part of his attention. He was shaking, trembling from the sheer overwhelming anguish. At some point, he bit down on his lip so hard that it bled, and he tasted blood in his mouth.

When it finally stopped, Jaehyun’s heart seemed to stop along with the electricity. For a single, terrifying second, he imagined that his heart had stopped beating, and he had died, but then the blindfold was being undone and the wires unwrapped from his dick and the torturers were telling him that he was finished. Looking across the room, he saw Jungwoo being untied from his chair as well.

Jungwoo ran up to him first, before he even managed to get up from the metal frame. In that moment, it didn’t matter that Jaehyun was naked, and completely, utterly wrecked: Jungwoo held him tight, repeating the words “I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry” like a prayer. Jaehyun let himself go boneless in his arms.

“It’s okay,” he whispered back, but Jungwoo didn’t hear it. He wouldn’t have believed it, anyways.

Not long after, Jaehyun passed out, the fatigue and brokenness finally manifesting into plain darkness.

He was dressed carefully, and then carried out of the dungeons by Jungwoo, with the remnants of agony still singing in his bones.


	11. Knives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> D: late again D: idec at this point
> 
> This chapter is possibly triggering, as it discusses (in considerable depth) self harm. If that is uncomfortable with you, skip the start and read from "Taeyong didn’t expect Jaehyun to tell him what happened" which is after the first --- section break.
> 
> From that you might already know that you're gonna suffer and cry through this chapter again but idk why ur here if not to suffer <3 thank you all for reading

_February 2018_

It had been a total of six days since the lottery, and Jaehyun was still not back. Taeyong had been furious when Doyoung had told him that Jungwoo had left, and he hadn’t managed to chase him back. The members waited with bated breath and hopes slowly shrinking, as the hours ticked by with no one back.

Finally, in the small hours of the morning, a black car pulled up outside their apartment, and a figure stepped out. At that point, not many of the members could sleep for fear and worry - they were all gathered in the living room, sitting tensely as they waited. Sicheng had been watching the windows, and when he saw it, he turned around and gestured for everyone to come look. 

“That’s Jungwoo, right?” Sicheng pointed down at the figure, and the rest of the members nodded in agreement. “Where’s Jaehyun?”

Nobody had an answer for that - they just watched. Eventually, Jungwoo opened the car door and, after struggling for a while, started walking to the entrance with another person’s arm slung around his shoulder. The other man seemed barely conscious, and incredibly weak - his footsteps dragged on the concrete, and his head hung downwards, hair obstructing his face.

For a while, no one spoke. Then, heartbrokenly, incredulously, Johnny whispered Jaehyun’s name.

Jaehyun. Finally, Jaehyun was back - broken, but back. Taeyong ran outside to the elevators, looking around frantically as if they would be there already.

The time taken for them to get up the elevator seemed far too long: once they had realised they were back, it felt like there wasn’t a second longer that they could wait. Taeyong paced in front of the door, biting down on his nails. When the door finally opened, Taeyong all but fell forward, clutching onto Jaehyun for dear life.

“Baby… baby I’m so sorry, I’m so glad you’re back, what do you need, what can I get for you?” Taeyong blubbered, his tears soaking into Jaehyun’s shoulder.

Jaehyun only hugged him closer. “Just you,” he mumbled into the embrace.

Taeyong nodded, and cried harder.

After a while, they broke apart. Taeyong saw that Lucas had already taken Jungwoo away somewhere, and part of his tired leader self was glad that he didn’t have to deal with him. At that moment all he wanted to was to be nothing but Jaehyun’s boyfriend, and give Jaehyun his infinite love until the broken look in his eyes and the gaunt, fragile weakness in his frame was gone.

“Can you talk about it?” Taeyong asked tentatively, after Jaehyun was settled in their bed. Jaehyun didn’t answer for a long time, and Taeyong took it as a no.

“I’m… hungry,” Jaehyun said finally, and Taeyong mentally kicked himself for not preparing anything to eat.

“Shit, I’m so sorry, I’ll go make something-”

“No, I want you here with me.”

Oh. 

“T-Then I’ll go tell Doyoung to get you some,” Taeyong said. Raising his voice, he yelled “DOYOUNG GET SOME FOOD FOR JAEHYUN” and then turned back to see Jaehyun watching him.

It was a little unnerving. Usually, Jaehyun looked at him with love, or fond amusement, or like, unbridled horniness or something, but this gaze was empty and crushed: it was Jaehyun looking at him and not knowing what to see and whether to speak. It was a look that screamed ‘I’m not okay’; one that asked Taeyong to stay by his side forever and in the same breath wished to be alone.

“Babe..,” Taeyong started, but he didn’t know what he could say. “Jaehyun.”

Jaehyun didn’t answer. The emptiness crushed him from the inside, and he lay very still, Eventually, he fell asleep, after eating the food in silence.

For a while, Taeyong just sat there, watching Jaehyun. He thought of the violent wounds that Jaemin had come back with, and carefully peeled back some of Jaehyun’s clothes to check.

There was nothing - almost nothing, and Taeyong was relieved and horrified at the same time until he turned a light on and looked closer.

It didn’t look like much, compared to the obvious and dramatic cuts that he had seen on Jaemin, but there was definitely something. Red-purple marks made twisted patterns down Jaehyun’s forearms, and more dragged their way up the tops of his thighs. They were small - just a few inches long each, and not incredibly deep, but it was the familiarity that chilled Taeyong to the core.

Taeyong knew marks like these - he knew them all too well, and he wished that he didn’t. They had appeared on his own skin, back when he was young and anxious and unsure, and some days now, when life became too much and he hated himself a little more than usual. He checked Jaehyun’s hands, and as expected but not hoped for, there was blood underneath his fingernails. Taeyong was reminded of the moments spent studying his own nails and picking the blood out, and suddenly, he felt the urge to do it all again.

It had started in the first year that he was a trainee, when he had realised that he hated his own skin. He hated that he looked so perfect that people expected him to be perfect, and he hated the lingering looks he got. One day he started scratching at his skin, peeling it away in jagged red lines, and he didn’t (couldn’t) stop. It became a habit - in the worst times, his mind would remind him of it, telling him about his long pretty nails and those scars he hid under long sleeved shirts and lines of controlled (not quite) pain. 

But no: he wouldn’t go back to it all. Conscious of Jaehyun’s sleeping form, he stopped himself. He didn’t know what had happened to Jaehyun to make him do this, but he wasn’t going to make everything worse for them both by going back to old habits when he should have been looking after Jaehyun.

Taeyong lay for a long time, mind racing. Part of him was wondering what it was that had caused Jaehyun to scratch himself like that, and the other was screaming at him to dig his own nails into his veins. The only thing that stopped him was the soft, steady voice in his head telling him that he couldn’t, for Jaehyun’s sake. 

Only hours later did he fall asleep, somewhat content with the knowledge that at least Jaehyun was back.

\---

Taeyong didn’t expect Jaehyun to tell him what happened, not after Jaemin had kept his silence for more than a year. It was the late morning, the first after Jaehyun had returned, and after looking at all of the breakfast options as if he wanted to eat everything and anything, Jaehyun had sat down with a bowl of porridge and looked up at Taeyong with a question plain in his eyes.

“Can I tell you what happened?” 

Taeyong almost choked on his cereal. “Babe, are you sure you’re ready?”

“Just this one thing. I need to get it out.” Jaehyun stared down into his breakfast, and then looked around. When he was satisfied that none of the other members were there, he said quietly, as if he were almost ashamed, “They starved me in the dungeons.”

“Oh,” Taeyong breathed, “oh.” So that was the weakness, and the strange relationship to food. He let out a slow sigh, then said “I’m sorry you had to go through that, baby.”

Jaehyun just shook his head, expression distant and blank. “I just wanted you to know. I don’t need sympathy.” He finished his food, and walked away without a word.

Taeyong watched him, paralysed. If one listened closely, they might have been able to hear his heart crack open again.

Softly, sadly, selfishly, he wished he could have his lover back.

\---

Jaehyun didn’t re-emerge from his room for the rest of the day. When Taeyong came by with lunch, he mumbled thank you, and ignored him until he left. 

“I love you, Jaehyun,” Taeyong said, voice soft and unsure, but never doubting the truth of the words.

“Love you too,” Jaehyun replied. It sounded empty, like him.

The only other person that had been allowed into the room was Jungwoo. Jungwoo, who was broken as well, but with no marks and no scars. Jungwoo’s scars came in the form of sad, fragile looks, and visible trembling fear whenever he made the tiniest mistake.

To think that the lottery had taken two, not one, this time - it make Taeyong sick to the stomach.

But maybe something about the broken being together made them whole. All Taeyong knew was that at some point in the afternoon, Jungwoo had ventured in to see Jaehyun, and he hadn’t left for hours. When Jungwoo came out, he wasn’t smiling, but some of the lost look was gone. He still refused to meet anyone’s eye unless told to, but inside himself, something tiny must have healed.

And Jaehyun? Taeyong didn’t know. He felt like he was losing the one thing that he thought he’d always have, and he was helpless as it slipped through his fingers.

“Jaehyun, please, look at me,” Taeyong said, later that night as they both tried and failed to sleep. Jaehyun turned around - his expression was closed off and hurt. It seemed to say ‘I wish you’d understand, but I know you never will.’

Taeyong kissed him on the forehead, tenderly. Jaehyun didn’t respond.

With his heart breaking in worry and loss, Taeyong turned to face the wall. Silent sobs shook his body, and for a dangerous moment, he wished that it had been he himself that was chosen.

\---

Taeyong tried. He sat by Jaehyun’s side and coaxed him to eat properly without getting sick, and cracked jokes hoping for a smile. He listened when Jaehyun tried to tell him something but failed to bring the words out, and he talked when the silence grew too much for Jaehyun. He helped Jaehyun apply anti-scarring balms to his cuts, and bit his tongue when all he wanted to do was ask why he had done it.

He tried, so so hard, but it all seemed to come to nothing. Jaehyun’s eyes stayed empty, and Taeyong’s heart broke a little more every day.

At some point, Taeyong didn’t even know what it was that kept him going. Maybe a little part of him held on to the fact that Jaehyun had laughed and smiled before, and the decision that he couldn’t stop until he saw that again; or maybe Taeyong couldn’t face a world where he had given up on Jung Jaehyun, his soulmate, his everything.

For weeks, Jaehyun made no progress: the marks turned bright red and bled more when he scratched them, before fading into the white before scars, but his mind kept reliving the pain of the electrocution and the starvation again and again, a loop that would not turn off and that made living normally impossible.

The most horrifying part was that the thing that had hurt the most left no marks - nothing but crippling self-hate and an empty part in his mind where something good might have lived before. Jaehyun hated it, and he hated the way the memories would not leave him alone. They were there, when he wanted to talk to Taeyong, or when he thought he might be able to get up and go to work.

Most importantly, they were there in his dreams: the darkness behind a blindfold, and the phantoms of Jungwoo’s cries, and the pain, shocking, overwhelming, all-encompassing pain. Again, and again, every night.

He was naive to think that leaving the dungeons that night was escape.

Somewhere, buried behind the anxiety and hurt, there was the knowledge that Taeyong cared. He knew it, and it was a sharp finger of guilt poking at his ribs because he couldn’t bring himself to trust his boyfriend despite everything he had done for him. In the moments before sleep, as he tried to believe that this night would be the first one without nightmares, he would listen to Taeyong cry beside him, and hate himself for pushing him away.

But it was for the best. Jaehyun had knives hidden within his soul, that he kept there so that they didn’t cut anyone else.

He’d keep them there forever, if he could.

\---

The first time that Jaehyun talked to Taeyong, properly, sincerely, lovingly, it was more than a whole month after he had returned from the dungeons. By then, the marks on his skin were halfway to invisible. He knew that when he was on camera, makeup would take care of the rest.

It started with a kiss. After weeks of silence, in which the only words he knew were from the fearful voices in his head, Jaehyun couldn’t trust words to say what he wanted to say.

On the 40th night that Taeyong kissed him goodnight (on the forehead, or the cheek, or the hand, never the lips), expecting nothing in return, Jaehyun reached out and took hold of his shoulder before Taeyong could turn around and break down again. Slowly, Jaehyun let his hand travel across Taeyong’s skin, until it was cupping his cheek. 

Taeyong held his breath, hope fluttering tentatively in his chest. He stared at Jaehyun, too scared to make a move and break the moment.

Their lips connected, softly at first: an apology, a question, a plea. The kiss said everything Jaehyun couldn’t find the words for: ‘I’m sorry’, and ‘please don’t be hurt,’ and somewhere most uncertainly, ‘do you still love me?’ When they tasted a tear (whose it was, they did not know) between them, it turned desperate, a thousand untold feelings poured out in this one kiss.

After what felt like a hundred eternities (but not enough, never enough) they broke apart. Jaehyun didn’t feel healed, but at least he had something - the beginning of remembering what happiness was.

“Am I yours?” Jaehyun asked.

“All of you,” Taeyong replied, “Even if you are not whole.”


	12. Reckless Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK SO THIS IS IT!! THE END!!! I MIGHT CRY
> 
> Business first: there is a tiny amount of implied self harm in this chapter. Please be aware. Also, the timestamp for this is 'present', but that present was the present when I started this fic, so it's something like October 2018.
> 
> OTHERWISE READ IT AND CRY WITH ME AND I REALLY HOPE YOU LOVE (and hate) THIS LAST CHAPTER

_Present (October 2018)_

Taeyong doesn’t consider himself brave. He is strong, sometimes, when 17 hearts and 17 dreams rest on him and he carries them all, and he is reckless, when he falls in love with Jaehyun again and again and lets himself keep him despite all the consequences.

But brave? No - Taeyong isn’t brave.

Bravery isn’t breaking down in paralysing fear and guilt whenever he thinks about the lottery; it isn’t being too scared to even speak about it with Jaemin, or Jaehyun, or anyone. When Taeyong gives in to the urge to renew the scars that run down his arms, he cannot feel brave; when the young ones look to him for answers and he is too afraid to seek them, he knows he is anything but.

Taeyong is not brave. He has so many fears that he does not know how to name them all.

Considering this, he doesn’t quite know what it is that empowers him now: what it is that pulls him out of his seat to stand, and then to let go of Jaehyun’s hand, his lifeline. Either way, it doesn’t matter: now is not the time to think of it. Now, his mind is blurred around the edges, focussing on only one thing: that he needs to find a way to stop Jaemin from getting hurt again.

Dimly, he is aware that the other members are shouting. He hears it, but doesn’t process it - the sounds blur together into roaring nothingness in his mind, and the only thing he knows is that he is angry and he loves all the members so much that he might as well die and in this moment he feels as if he could and would do anything.

Before he understands what he is doing and why, he is taking purposeful strides up to the managers. The manager at the front, the one who had picked out the card and called Jaemin’s name, looks at him sharply, eyes harsh and merciless, but it doesn’t stop Taeyong like he thought it should have.

There is no stopping Taeyong: the need to protect renders him invincible. Jaehyun is calling Taeyong’s name, but for maybe the first time in their relationship, he doesn’t listen. Behind the manager, Taeyong sees the door - that single, simple door. He knows what it is. He knows too much, and not enough.

Behind that door lies each and every one of Jaemin and Jaehyun’s nightmares. Taeyong can only imagine the weapons that had ripped deep gashes into Jaemin’s back, and the room that Jaehyun stayed in to be starved. He knows that they imagine them too, in the nights that they come crying to him and he knows only to hold them and wish empathy could tell him the truth.

There are broken parts in the people he love, but he can’t see them clearly enough to fix them.

Jaemin is standing somewhere to Taeyong’s left: he had taken the beginnings of steps forward before but when Taeyong stood up, he had stopped. His mouth opens, as if to protest, but he is frozen, in both terror and self-preservation. 

Taeyong comes to a stop inches away from the manager - Taeyong’s a little taller, and he looks down at him with eyes intense and piercing.

The manager looks scared. Taeyong seems possessed - who wouldn’t be?

“You can’t do this,” Taeyong says, and then just for a second, Taeyong falters - it is so miniscule that only Jaehyun notices it. It is merely fear waking up in Taeyong again, kicking in with its doubts and reminders and instructions to run away and any normal person would do just that but Jaehyun, with years of experience knowing Taeyong’s mind intimately, clearly sees Taeyong stiffen up again and tell the fears no. 

The manager’s mouth sets itself into a thin, bloodless line, and for a moment, the world is paused, waiting for a reaction. 

“Who do you think you are to say that?” is the reply. If the manager’s voice shakes a little, no one knows whether it's from fear or anger. Maybe it’s laughter, hidden behind empty emotionless plainness - after all, they seem almost to enjoy the torture they give. 

“I'm the leader of this group, and a decent human being,” Taeyong said, “unlike you monsters.”

The manager really does laugh then. “You think that gives you authority?” he asks, a harsh chuckle escaping his lips. “What a surprise, that you're still innocent.”

Taeyong backs away a few steps, but his gaze never strays from the man in front of him. In the perimeters of the room, more managers move in closer, ready to act. Behind Taeyong, Jaemin finally unfreezes - he stumbles forward a little, head shaking in tiny desperate spasms. Pleas for Taeyong to stop, to not risk himself die on his lips before he can voice them.

“Jaemin’s been hurt before, you know this, you did it yourself,” Taeyong says, fists clenched. “He was hurt so bad that he had to take a year off, which means you hurt him even more than you were supposed to, and you still think it’s okay to do it again? You think anything about this is okay?”

“It’s what the lottery says.”

“FUCK the lottery.”

“Lee Taeyong-”

Jaehyun goes up and grabs Taeyong’s hand from behind, but Taeyong shakes him off. Everyone else watches, motionless; too scared to move for fear that things would get worse. Taeyong starts to speak again, but even he is beginning to realise that nothing he says would stop the company from punishing them.

“Taeyong. You know there’s nothing you can do. Haven’t we taught you to obey?” the manager doesn’t look scared or mad anymore - just disappointed. Maybe this has happened before, with another group. Maybe he knows that he’ll get his way in the end. Maybe the managers here in the dungeons, after being the bringers of pain for so long, don’t even know how proper emotions work anymore.

Taeyong knows that he’s been taught to obey. Before the word rebellion was part of his childish vocabulary he knew to obey - to listen and do and think nothing. The elders teach him what to do, and he must, without question, obey: even as leader, he only passes on what the company asks him to do.

But even before obeying, Taeyong knows love: he knows the love of a parent to children (and at this point, Jaemin is basically his son), and the overwhelming, unconditional, heartbreaking love he has for Jaehyun. He knows the love of the group - all 18 of them - a team so inseparable that they are closer than blood brothers.

“Absolutely nothing I can do?” he asks. It is a challenge, and he knows he is not backing down.

The seconds that follow feel stretched out: it is like how they say that your entire life flashes through the last seven seconds before you die, a whole lifetime in a single moment. 

First, Taeyong thinks of Jaehyun - the way that he returned, skinny and weak and hopeless. He thinks of the nights that he had spent thinking that he had lost his everything, and hating the world for taking him away and leaving this empty shell behind. 

Jaehyun had healed. It came at the cost of two months of pain and six more of half-faked emotions that were all Jaehyun knew how to feel, after the dungeons had stripped him of his ability to consider himself human. It came at the cost of lies and silence and weeks on end of Jaehyun swinging violently between eating too much and being too sick to eat at all.

Possibly most cruelly, it came at the cost of seven tubes of concealer, long sleeved shirts, and matching scars down both Taeyong and Jaehyun’s arms.

That was Jaehyun. That was what Taeyong had watched, helpless, hurting, this year.

Before that, was the silence. The eye of the storm, the one year of nothing. 

Less than nothing. Nothing, minus one: minus Jaemin.

In a group of 15 members, one wouldn’t expect that a missing member would feel like a huge, gaping hole in their midst, but it did. The fact that one of their youngest was gone, and that it was, to some degree, the fault of the older members, was heartbreaking. Taeyong saw the six remaining dreamies missing Jaemin and he wished he could comfort them but how could he? Nothing could heal Jaemin - even after his back was better, his mind was not.

And that, exactly, is the worst part. Jaemin’s punishment, received when he was barely 16 years old, had broken the boy, completely and utterly. Taeyong turns back for a second and sees Jaemin, lost and alone and so so scared. He sees him, and the nights two years ago that he spent trying to heal the broken boy come rushing back to him. Jaemin’s shattered gaze back then mirrors his look right now, and the part of Taeyong that considers each and every member of NCT his own family snaps.

There is no way, he decides, no way in hell that he would let him get broken again. This, he decides quickly, and the thought is loud and insistent.

More quietly, he remembers his darkest thoughts when Jaehyun was suffering beside him and wouldn’t let him in. He remembers thinking ‘if only I knew what he had been through’ and then ‘if only I had been through it too’ and finally ‘if only it had been me in the first place.’

Like poison (the sweetest type), the idea seeps into his mind - that this is his chance to do just that.

And thus everything builds up to this moment: the nights watching a broken Jaemin, and the year spent missing him and hoping desperately for him to be healed, and the months in which Taeyong saw the same thing happen all over again to Jaehyun.

Standing in the no man’s land between where the rest of the members sit and where the managers and the lottery jar stand, Taeyong feels like he can hear the screams soaked into these lifeless dungeon walls. They scream for a saviour, and if providing that means adding his own to the cacophony, then so be it.

“I’ll take the punishment for Jaemin,” Taeyong says.

The silence hurts more than a rejection would have.

 

Slowly, with sly, sadistic consideration, the manager looks Taeyong up and down. Anyone else might see a reckless leader, a broken lover, a man with a desperate need to avenge and protect, but perhaps these torturers only see a person: one that they can destroy.

Taeyong’s heart is laid out in front of him for all to see but by now, they are blind to it.

“Sure.” The manager says. It is simple - too simple. Jaehyun has seen the cruelty: he knows that there is more. While the others start to break down in a mixture of gratitude and wretched heartbreak, Jaehyun holds his breath and waits for the next words.

“Your sacrifice is admirable, but you’ll have to pay for disobeying the lottery,” the manager continues. “You do know that you’re not allowed to take punishments for other members, right?”

Taeyong turns and glances at Jaehyun - for the first time, true fear flashes through his eyes. He swallows thickly, then says “Yes, I do know.”

“Because of the special circumstances, we will allow you to make the choice to take the punishment instead of Jaemin,” the manager goes on to say, looking at Jaemin and then Taeyong with both pity and calculating coldness. “But as a warning, the punishment is likely to be… more.”

Jaehyun watches as Taeyong opens his mouth to reply - in horror, he realises that he is about to say yes. Suddenly, Jaehyun regrets never telling Taeyong about the worst of what had happened to him. Maybe if Taeyong had known, he wouldn’t make a decision like this.

He is cut off by the sound of Jaemin whimpering, trying to speak out. There are no intelligible words, but the thoughts and hurt behind it is clear. Jaemin wants so many things: he wants Taeyong to back down and not risk his own life and sanity, and he wants everyone to calm down and pause, for this thing to stop right that second.

Most of all, he’s just a scared and scarred boy, with too much trauma for a hundred lifetimes swirling inside his young broken mind.

Jaemin just doesn’t want to be hurt again.

The strong and tough facade that Taeyong had on breaks. His face crumples, and tears come to his eyes. “Please… why can’t you have mercy? Why can’t you just hurt none of us?”

“I gave you a warning,” the manager says. “Is that not merciful?”

No, Jaehyun thinks, that isn’t mercy, that’s the exact opposite, but no matter what he thinks, the truth is that the managers control them. Everything they do is on their terms, and if their terms are to hurt them more and more, they can change little about it. Selfishly, Jaehyun wishes that someone else would volunteer to take the punishment, so that his boyfriend wouldn’t have to.

It doesn’t happen. No matter how much anyone loves anyone at all, no one loves as hard as Taeyong.

“Take me,” Taeyong says, and the managers do not hesitate to do so. Their stiff hands around Taeyong’s arms as they lead him through to the door (the horrible, torturous, life-changing door) are the wolf’s maw closing around him, and something tells Jaehyun that this will be twice as bad as what he and Jaemin went through combined.

“Come back,” Jaehyun says weakly, hopelessly. No one hears. Jaemin is crying, silent shocked tears that fall straight to the dungeon floors. His expression looks distant, as if he doesn’t know that he’s crying - maybe he is remembering.

Taeyong disappears through the doorway, and Jaehyun hears the door slam behind him. He knows that from this moment on, Taeyong would be living Jaehyun’s nightmares out.

When Jaehyun makes his way back to the dorms, he collapses onto his bed alone, and lets the memories do the same to him.

Today, the lottery takes another one afresh - and with him, it reclaims the other two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you. Thank you so much for reading this, and commenting (if you did) and giving me kudos and support and appreciation... I am just so thankful. Every single one of my readers, from the ones that have commented on all the chapters to the ones that haven't even kudosed - I love and am thankful for all of you. I'm being kinda dramatic but ugh this has been such a long ass ride and it's my first ever long fic I've done and I can hardly believe it's ending either.
> 
> Most importantly, there are some extra important people that I need to thank. First and foremost, my beta reader Ella. She is amazing - the bestest bestest beta reader there is and I'm lucky to have her as a friend and a beta reader. Ella: thank you for being here from the start, when this was just a fetus of a plot, and helping me to grow this into what it is now - ur help and support and occasional chiding for inaccuracy (ugh PTSD) is the reason that this even exists the way it is. Secondly, I would like to thank those readers that have commented a lot... I want to name them but I feel like I might forget someone and that would be sad so you guys know who you are. Your comments and support (especially in that one week hiatus) kept me going and I'm so glad that you liked this story and stuck with it.
> 
> So yea, I really hope you liked this chapter, and this entire fic. Stay tuned: I'll be starting a new Long Ass Ride at the start of March (which will be a completely different genre from this but if you like my writing style please look forward to it I guess), and a few 2/3 parters are coming as well. 
> 
> Love you all! <3 <3 <3 thank you so much for reading


	13. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAH I BET YOU WEREN'T EXPECTING THIS RIGHT
> 
> MHMM I AM BACK WITH A SURPRISE EPILOGUE I HOPE YOU ENJOY IT :DD

When Taeyong comes back, he is fine. His eyes are empty, but dry, and if his smiles are fake, it’s difficult to tell. 

Maybe he’s strong. Maybe he’s broken to the point that he can’t even show it anymore.

Anyways, as a leader, he is functional. Unlike the others, he doesn’t need to take time off work - instead, he throws himself back into it, working until he’s too tired to even think anymore.

If he is wearing T-shirts a little less than usual, it might just be due to the winter weather, right? And if he comes back from therapy looking cold and distant, that’s better than broken and crying, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

It stays inside him. NCT continues to function. The dungeons continue to function. 

Everything works smoothly.

Just two months later, only two weeks before the end of the year, they visit the dungeons again and Haechan is taken. The members treat it with grief and overwhelming regret, but there is no anger. By then, they have accepted the reality of the lottery.

They try not to make mistakes (and fail, too many times), and above all, they listen to the company. Protest doesn’t work - it only hurts more. The most perceptive can see this from the fact that Taeyong is not as alright as he seems on the outside, and the rest saw it clearly in the way that Taeyong broke down in a paralysing panic attack when they were called down for the fourth lottery.

Haechan comes back with an obviously broken leg - he’s taken to hospital almost immediately. They are told that it’ll be months until he can dance again. 

The members miss him - they miss him like part of them was torn away and living doesn’t quite feel real when he isn’t there. The sun has fallen: what else would you expect? They live in darkness, too scared to make a move.

And that becomes normal. In 2019, their fourth year of being together, the lottery becomes a normal part of the way they live, and although no one speaks of the punishments (four victims, now), the idea of it looms over them, expected and oppressive.

Nothing stops. They continue being idols, achieving more and more every day.

The lottery continues, and without another choice, they let it take them, one by one. The end is that there is no end - the end is only the end of the fight. 

And that’s how SM makes their good perfect boys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're interested, I'mma share my reasoning behind the the tortures bc I'm... a literature student and I literature student so hard that I analyse my own work :') 
> 
> So basically, each of the punishments symbolise something that actually happens to idols.
> 
> 1\. Jaemin's whipping and the electrocution: this is just pure physical pain, associated with them being overworked to the point of injury and pain. also, they are tied up and restrained, indicating the lack of control they have on their own lives.  
> 2\. isolation: as trainees, idols aren't allowed to own phones, and as idols they aren't allowed to go in public without bodyguards or hiding themselves etc., this results in a certain separation from the rest of society  
> 3\. the rape (and also the slightly sexual elements of Jaehyun's electrocution): this represents the sexualisation of the idols  
> 4\. starvation: this one's pretty obvious, it represents the diets (which are sometimes literally just straight up starvation) that they get put on
> 
> yea :) that's what everything kinda means :) in a way, it's a wider metaphor for reality.
> 
> So yea I hope you liked this epilogue... and I'm really not continuing with this (probably ever, not even spinoffs unless you guys ask vehemently), so this is the real end of the lottery <3

**Author's Note:**

> New chapters every weekend.
> 
> Please comment feedback and predictions! I'd love to know your thoughts! Thanks so much for reading :)


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